


Where my Demons Hide

by gunslingaaahhh



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: AU, Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Gen, M/M, Psychics, Were-Creatures, Witches, pyrokinesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 13:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11059569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunslingaaahhh/pseuds/gunslingaaahhh
Summary: Let me begin by saying that this has been sitting in my WIPs folder for like 3 years, and I feel like it deserves to be posted.That said: I will not be continuing this fic. I no longer participate in the H50 fandom, and have no plans to return. Think of this pic as a final parting gift, as unfinished as it is.





	Where my Demons Hide

**Author's Note:**

> Let me begin by saying that this has been sitting in my WIPs folder for like 3 years, and I feel like it deserves to be posted.
> 
> That said: I will not be continuing this fic. I no longer participate in the H50 fandom, and have no plans to return. Think of this pic as a final parting gift, as unfinished as it is.

When Danny Williams was a little boy, he had no idea that the things he read about in fairy stories or saw in movies were, in fact, real. He didn’t know that his innate ability -- and the innate ability of his family -- to create fire from nothing was something that was real until it happened to him, when he was going through puberty.

Even with all of that, the idea that supernatural creatures could exist never crossed his mind. To have various psychic abilities was one thing, scientists often said human’s didn’t use all of their brain. Vampires, though? Skin-walkers, shape-shifters, mermaids? Nope, no, no way.

Oh, how wrong he was.

~*~

Danny was in his mid-twenties when the news broke that “supernatural beings” did in fact exist, and that he’d been walking among at least some of them his whole life, and he’d never realized it.

Of course, the fact that he himself could be considered a supernatural being never crossed his mind. He was a pyrokinetic, that was all.

His home town boasted a clan of real-life Jersey Devils, as well as a few other oddities, but for the most part everything was... normal. He was able to go through the police academy without being discriminated against too much, had decent partners, even married a snarky British woman who often joked about how much of a hot-head Danny was. 

However, when Rachel got pregnant, the possibility that the baby too would have Danny’s ability to make fire made Rachel nervous. It wasn’t something that could be tested for; the child wouldn’t show any signs until puberty, just like Danny and his whole family before him. The weight of that was too much for her, all of a sudden, and when Danny was served with the papers, his family asked him why he was so surprised. 

Rachel wasn’t any different than the rest of the new breed of prejudiced humans out there in the world. Being a cop meant Danny probably wouldn’t get any sort of decent custody agreement, so he voted for visitation and said silent thanks that he at least got to see his child a little.

Grace grew into a beautiful little girl, Rachel was remarried, and Danny had made detective; life wasn’t perfect, but it was alright as long as he got to see his daughter.

Leave it to those prejudiced humans to rip into his world and destroy it.

~*~

Danny’s grandfather had always told him that the fire would call to him, draw him close so he could do it’s bidding. That’s why his family had settled in New Jersey; no volcanoes to speak of, no potential for forest fires. Thus, moving to Hawaii to follow Rachel and Grace was probably the worst idea he could’ve possibly had, but there was no talking him out of it. It was either go or maybe see Grace a couple of times a year, max. 

The fire _did_ call to him, at first, but being that Hawaii is an island chain surrounded by ocean, the call was muffled, and Danny didn’t feel any differently than he had in Jersey. He wasn’t a fan of the humidity or the off-and-on rain showers, or the sand that seemed to get everywhere, regardless of whether or not he was close to the beach. His hair suffered, and he ended up with a terrible farmers’ tan, but his ratty apartment wasn’t burning down around him, and he hadn’t accidentally blown up the car he’d gotten from HPD. He’d count it as a win.

His “win” column was going to become excruciatingly small compared to his “lose” column, though, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

~*~

“So, wait, the guy crashed the crime scene?”

The older detective sighed heavily, rubbing at the back of his neck like there was a crick in it. “Yup. We were in the middle of gathering evidence and he just strolled right in, all crazy-eyed.”

“He’s not just _some guy_ though, he’s the son of the vic,” another detective added as she strolled by. “He’s been off-island for a long time, but evidently he could feel the loss or something, came running.”

Danny blinked at her, confused. “Feel the loss?”

“Yeah,” the older guy replied. “Jack was part of HPD for years, great cop. He was married with a couple’a kids; the one that stormed the crime scene is his son. Guy bred a pack of werewolves--”

“Whoa, slow down, _what?_ ” Danny raised his hands, palms out. “They have that kind of thing here?”

The lady detective chuckled, stirring her coffee. “No way, brah, Hawaii is not known for it’s dog problem; that’s a mainland trait. Jack wasn’t born here, he and his family moved here from somewhere out in the middle of the mainland. I guess it’s more prominent there.”

“So the whole family were werewolves, is what you’re telling me.”

“Everyone but the wife,” the older guy butt in. “Doris, I think? Not sure how that happened; regardless, the kids ended up with the trait and they all moved here for one reason or another. We didn’t get into the particulars, but I’ll tell you what: whatever holdovers there were when he was a human? Made Jack McGarrett a damn good cop. It’s a shame someone wanted to take him out.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Lemme guess, they used silver bullets.”

The other detectives just stared at him, as if to say “obviously, you dumb flatlander.” Shrugging, he went back to his desk, doing his best to ignore the way the other two detectives were now whispering about him. 

His “abilities” were listed on his ID, had to be; it was government law now. When he’d put in for a transfer from Newark, they’d told him his status as a “peculiar human” might make it more difficult for him to get a job. He’d written it off, confident his prowess as a detective would be enough. Didn’t mean he didn’t get his fair share of teasing, though. 

~*~

After hearing about the McGarrett case and the “crazy-eyed son returned,” things were quiet on that front until one morning when Danny walked in and saw a thick file on his desk. Confused, he flipped through it and was surprised to find it was the file on the McGarrett murder. Surprised until he remembered hearing about how the son -- military, high ranking -- had wanted to know every minute detail of the case, as it was happening. That sort of thing was hard to do, mostly because it got in the way of good police work, and it wasn’t shocking that the case was being shuffled around, given the special circumstances.

Sighing heavily, Danny gathered the file and marched into his boss’ office, rapping his knuckles against the glass. The older man at the desk -- a regular, run-of-the-mill human -- glanced up, removing his glasses. 

“Williams?”

“Sir, I found this on my desk... is it just making the rounds or did it end up with me specifically?”

The older man sighed, rubbing at his temples. “Williams, look, you’re a great detective, and you don’t put up with a lot of bullshit. Fact of the matter is, I’m pretty sure that since you’re, uh, peculiar, the others tend to stay away from you. This guy, Jack’s son, he... he doesn’t back down. At all. And he’s intense; everyone else just caves and any work we’ve gotten done is falling further and further behind.”

“What do you need to me to do,” Danny asked, flatly, “not let this guy bully me? If he’s a bully, he’s gonna be a bully to everyone, including me, peculiarities notwithstanding.”

“He wants to take over the case,” the other man said, defeated. “The governor offered him a position running some kind of outfit that’s government sponsored, so he thinks now he can just pick and choose. We don’t want to give it to him, for a variety of reasons, one of which is that he isn’t a cop and has no cop training. The other... well. He’s got some interesting ‘recruits,’ let’s just say.”

“All of this is aside from the whole revenge factor, too, right? Because if he _does_ manage to get his hands on this case, he’s going to turn it into a vendetta.”

“You aren’t going to let him.”

“... so I don’t have a choice, I’m taking the case.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Great.”

Leaving the office with some kind of grace was difficult, but he managed. Inside, though, he was furious, which was never good (the water cooler would boil as he walked by, for Pete’s sake). He didn’t want to deal with a self-obsessed, entitled brat like McGarrett’s son any more than anyone else did, but that didn’t mean he was going to let the buck continue to pass around HPD.

No, Danny decided the buck was going to stop with him, and if that meant squaring off against a werewolf, then so be it.

~*~

His first order of business was to study the case file and do as much research about modern werewolves as he possibly could. A lot of what came up was archaic, and Danny had to do some creative searching in order to find any information on how werewolves lived in contemporary times.

Danny was surprised to learn that the whole “turn into a wolf on the full moon” thing was a rumor started by people who didn’t know any better; shapeshifters could shift at any time they wanted, and in the case of a werewolf, shifting was _easier_ on the full moon. If there was a time to shift, that was when to do it. There was also the whole issue with the silver; Jack had been killed using silver bullets, but it turned out that a werewolf could be killed by regular everyday bullets, as well. The difference was that even if the shot missed vital areas, if it was silver it would undoubtedly kill the victim. They could heal from an average gunshot wound; a silver tipped bullet would inevitably kill them.

Frowning, Danny glanced at the case file. The ME had pulled a silver slug out of Jack, and even if it hadn’t gone into him at point-blank range, the silver being there would’ve killed him eventually, and quickly at that. Trace amounts had been found in his bloodstream, which confirmed Danny’s theory that once the stuff was in the system, you were done. _Doesn’t seem conducive to a long life expectancy to go into the cop business,_ he thought, _or the military._ There was a good chance no one had known the McGarretts were shape-shifters, considering acceptance of such things was relatively new. 

Scrubbing at his face, Danny leaned back in his chair and stretched, popping his back before slumping down. What evidence that could be collected before McGarrett Jr had crashed the party was accounted for; anything else was contaminated and probably destroyed when CSU was kicked out of the house. According to the case notes, the son was living in the house. Danny shuddered; gruesome. 

The previous detective had noted the son’s name, but Danny was steadfastly ignoring it; he’d already developed an opinion about the guy, he didn’t want to make it too personal by learning his name or making it seem like he’d essentially been stalking him.

He would, however, eventually have to go out to the former crime-scene and ask the guy questions, if nothing else. 

It had occurred to Danny at about half past two in the morning that he should maybe look into the government-funded team that was allegedly being put together, and just how much sway that gave McGarrett. Booting up his laptop, Danny yawned and scratched absently at his stubble. He opened his browser and paused, wondering how best to phrase his search. Shrugging, he went with what he knew and blinked at the results, of which there were surprisingly few.

Evidently, the team was calling itself a “task force,” which was most likely owed to McGarrett’s military background. They dealt mostly with supernatural or peculiar human crimes, unless something big came up and the governor needed them. The fact that the state of Hawaii _needed_ such a thing made Danny shiver; what kind of place had he moved to? Scrolling, he saw a few links to information about cases the team had worked, but nothing much about the people who were a part of said team. If he wanted to know more, he’d have to go to the source.

~*~

The task-force headquarters was relatively easy to find, though not easy to get into. Danny had to show his badge and his peculiar human ID, as well as his drivers license before the grumpy looking man at the front desk allowed him to cross the lobby to the bank of elevators. Grumbling, Danny tucked everything back into his pockets and strode to the elevators, thumbing the button for the top floor. As the elevator began it’s climb, he felt a weird sort of... itch, in the back of his head, like he was trying to remember a song lyric or phone number he was sure he knew but couldn’t place. It was a weird feeling, and he tried his best to shake it off before the elevator doors opened and he exited his way out to the corridor.

Everything was sleek, black, and glass. Glancing around, Danny whistled through his teeth; nice digs, definitely government money. Upon approaching a set of double glass doors, Danny caught a glimpse of a young woman standing at a table, busily sweeping her hands over the surface. Momentarily caught up in what a beauty she was, he didn’t notice a man come up alongside him.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked, and Danny jumped, startled. The man was of asian descent, with cheekbones that could cut glass. His expression was unreadable, so Danny just nodded.

“Detective Danny Williams, I need to speak to Commander McGarrett, if possible.”

The man just stared at him, eyes so dark they were almost black. After a moment he nodded and gestured for Danny to follow him into the main room. The woman at the table glanced up, her eyes equally as dark, flitting over Danny’s person, as if to catalogue him.

“Wait here, I’ll get him,” the man said, depositing Danny at the table, which he saw was actually a computer; there were screens mounted on the wall, out of sight of the main corridor.

“This, this is a nice set-up, here; HPD would die to have this,” he muttered, half to himself and half to the woman.

“We’re supposed to be the best, so we need to have the best,” the woman replied. “What do you need to talk to Steve about?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to--” Danny began before he was abruptly cut off.

“What do you want?” came a snapped, aggressive voice, and Danny whipped around to see a tall, handsome man coming towards him, long legs easily eating up the distance. His body posture screamed military, and Danny knew without a shadow of a doubt that this man was McGarrett.

“Hello, Detective Danny Williams, nice to meet you too. I’m here to talk about your father’s case, since no one else got an interview.”

McGarrett’s eyes narrowed, and he looked down his nose at Danny, fully using his height to his advantage. “Sent over another one, huh? Well, you listen to me, Detective: I haven’t got anything to say to you or any of the other idiots allegedly working on my father’s case. I’ve already told your boss to hand over the case and I’ll take it from there.”

Spreading his hands, Danny shrugged. “I’m sorry for your loss, I really am, but you see, there is a huge conflict of interest in giving you any of our case files. Huge. Like, I cannot even truly measure how huge, and I think you know that. I _also_ think you know that the governor probably didn’t mean funding your personal vendetta when she asked you to form this task force. Revenge killings are _so_ four hundred years ago, babe.”

Danny could almost hear how widely the young woman’s eyes opened at that, her shock palpable. The man with the cheekbones was unflappable; he barely blinked, opting instead to move to stand beside the woman. McGarrett didn’t move, just stood there processing Danny’s words, and Danny noticed how tightly balled his fists were, and the little white rage lines around his nose.

“You, you think you’re any different from the rest of them?” McGarrett asked, voice scary-calm and even. “You aren’t; I’ve done my research on the people over there, Detective; you’re all the same. Just doing the minimum amount of work required to get the job done, not really caring if anyone gets _punished_ for what they did. I figure since I can’t trust _you_ with justice, I’ll have to find my own.”

The condescension in McGarrett’s voice made Danny’s blood boil, and he could feel his own temper rising. “Really? That’s what you think? Listen to me, Army boy--”

“ _Navy_ ,” McGarrett all but barked, eyes burning.

“Whatever; I don’t know or care what you think you know about my colleagues, but I’m different. Apparently, I’m being entrusted as the only person to not take your bullshit, and I’m gonna tell you right now, it’s not gonna happen. I am not turning the case over to you, and I am going to work it like your father was _my_ father, because that’s just the type of guy I am. Now, you can either choose to be cooperative and help me do that, or you can continue to waltz around like Mr Fucking Know-It-All, it’s up to you.”

In this time, Danny had moved to stand almost toe-to-toe with McGarrett, blunt end of one finger dangerously close to poking the other man’s chest.

“Get your finger out of my face,” McGarrett said, voice low and almost silky. 

“Or what?” Danny scoffed, “you’ll break it off?”

Rather than reply, McGarrett’s hand darted out, lightning quick, and grabbed Danny’s wrist, twisting it and forcing Danny down onto one knee, shoulder wrenched high and tight. He grunted at the sudden discomfort, more humiliated and angry than injured. He chose to ignore the shocked gasp of the young woman, chose to forget they _had an audience_.

“You can tell your superior to transfer the case to me, or I’ll call the governor myself and have her do it, I’m not playing around anymore,” McGarrett said, bent low enough to speak in Danny’s ear. “Are we clear?”

Gritting his teeth, Danny felt warmth bloom in his chest and surge through his body, rippling like burning oil down into the arm McGarrett had a grip on. The sudden heat caused McGarrett to yelp and jump back, clutching his hand to his chest. Danny stood, adjusting his clothes and smoothing his hair. “I really didn’t want to do that, but you didn’t give me a choice.”

McGarrett’s eyes were wide, his hand pink. He glanced over at his teammates, who were staring at Danny also, though only the man with the cheekbones seemed unphased.

“You know, if you’d given me a chance to explain, I could’ve told you he was a pyrokinetic,” the man said conversationally.

“Anyone would’ve known that if they looked up my personnel file,” Danny rolled his eyes.

“We don’t like to do that to one of our own,” the woman stated simply, glancing at McGarrett.

“So how did you--”

“You did research on the team, did you not? So you’d know that as well as working supernatural and peculiar human cases, we are all also peculiar humans?” the man asked, eyebrow quirked. “Chin Ho Kelly, I’m a psychic; plain, run-of-the-mill, can tap into cyber infrastructure, that sort of thing.” He offered a hand to Danny, who shook it, taken aback.

“I, yeah, I looked up the team, but nothing popped up about anyone specifically. No names, no peculiarities, nothing like that.”

The young woman grinned, coming around the table to offer her hand as well, much to the indignation of McGarrett, who was spluttering. “Kono Kalakaua, alchemist. Or I guess you could say I’m a witch, high priestess... they all mean kinda the same thing.”

Danny blinked. “Wow... I knew some witches back in Jersey, but they were the kind that rhymed with ‘bitch’ more than the potions kind.”

“Interesting you didn’t get recruited,” Kono said, thoughtful, before turning to McGarrett. “You said you wanted just peculiar humans, right? He’s perfect.”

Grumbling, McGarrett gingerly folded his arms across his chest. “He’s a mainlander.”

Chin raised both brows. “So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“I-- he didn’t... I wasn’t comfortable with it, alright?” McGarrett snapped before turning on his heel and marching back to his office.

“Huh, I guess that concludes negotiations,” Danny sighed, running a hand over his hair. “So, um--”

“I can probably get you some information,” Chin offered. “Steve might not be a cop, but he grew up with one as a parent, so he knows a little about crime scene preservation. He took a lot of pictures, documented, the whole bit, even after he told HPD to get lost. Everything is uploaded on our private server; give me a few minutes, and I’ll have it on a flash drive for you.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

Nodding, Chin went to his own office to retrieve a drive before coming back out to the computer table. He plugged it in and his fingers flew; Danny averted his gaze, watching all the files fly by made him ill.

“So, New Jersey, huh?” Kono asked. “Long way from home.”

“And not by choice; my ex moved here with her new husband and our daughter. I couldn’t just let them go, you know?”

Kono’s eyes softened and she nodded. “Ohana, it’s the most important thing there is. Chin and I are cousins, in fact -- peculiarities run in the family.”

“We’ve got an auntie who’s a pyro, like you,” Chin added before removing the drive. “Here, this has all the evidence Steve collected; there’s probably a lot of the same, but since CSU never got a chance to move through the whole house, there’s probably some you haven’t seen.”

“This is fantastic... hopefully it helps. I would still like to ask some questions, but evidently the conversation is closed.”

Chin grinned, a slight curve at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, Steve can be a little... abrupt? He’s fresh into civilian life, transferred into the reserves, so he’s still adjusting. Not that it’s an excuse to act like a dick, but hey, what can you do.”

Danny grinned at that. “You are a good man, Chin Ho Kelly. It was nice to meet you guys, maybe I’ll see you around, if Commander Jackass doesn’t chew me to shreds first.”

“I’d be careful all the same,” Kono advised. The cousins waved him out the door, and Danny was grinning as he made his way to the elevator. He knew there were other people like him around, he just hadn’t met any yet. These guys seemed alright, except for McGarrett; he was a dick.

~*~

His laptop at home was a piece of junk, so Danny waited until he got to his office the next morning to plug in the drive and upload the new evidence. He groaned when he saw that there were literally hundreds, almost _thousands_ of photos and files; it was going to take him weeks to sift through it all and find what was pertinent and what was old.

As he worked, he could hear his colleagues passing by his office, murmuring. He knew for a fact that he was the only peculiar human in homicide, though there were at least two others in other divisions. Still, for a lot of people -- especially the cops that had been around awhile -- peculiar humans were weird, and often Danny felt like he was in an aquarium. Eventually he’d get up and pull his blinds, but that didn’t stop people from walking by and peeking in.

There were, of course, peculiar humans and supernatural beings that didn’t look entirely human, for one reason or another. However, in Danny’s experience, all the peculiars he’d met looked “normal.” He knew he certainly did, even if the other detectives mocked his hair and his ties and his leather loafers. There was no reason to stare at him like he was a zoo animal. They were all just waiting for him to ignite something, he was sure.

Well, he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

~*~

The evidence Steve had collected did yield a few leads, but it was hard to navigate everything even from his office computer.

“If I had one of those surface table things, that would make this so much easier,” he muttered to himself. “If McGarrett wasn’t a fuck, maybe we could work it together.”

No sooner spoken than Danny was called into his boss’ office, the other man looking a little defeated.

“Have a seat, Williams. We need to talk.”

Dread filled Danny’s belly, and he sat, chewing his lip nervously. “Everything ok?”

The older man held up a sheet of paper and wiggled it; Danny couldn’t see what was written on it, but he did catch a glimpse of an official letterhead.

“This is a fax from the governor. Apparently, after your little _visit_ yesterday, her task force was so impressed, they’d like for you to be transferred to them.”

It took him a moment to process; impressed? With him? He’d almost severely burned a werewolf, how was that impressive?

“I don’t understand... they’re just, what, drafting me? Can they do that?”

“Evidently they can, when the governor is involved. You start with them tomorrow, and since everything to do with you people makes me sick, I’m going to suggest you pack up your desk today. Now.”

Danny opened his mouth to ask a question but got stuck. “You people? What d’you mean, ‘you people?’ Peculiars? Man, I didn’t peg you for being prejudiced.”

The other man narrowed his eyes. “You’re a tax write off, now get out.”

He didn’t have a snappy retort, so he collected himself and the contents of his office and went home. Part of him was saddened; he’d like that guy, had liked a few of the people he worked with, but now that he knew how they _really_ felt, well... the interior of the car was much warmer than it should’ve been. 

Once home, Danny checked the time and saw that he had about an hour until Grace was out of school; he made a quick call to Rachel and it was agreed that he’d collect Grace from school and have her home by dinner. Talking to his little girl always made him feel better, and he hoped this time it would be the same.

~*~

Standing outside the task-force HQ the next morning, box loaded with personal items clutched to his chest, Danny took a deep breath and marched himself inside. He was nervous, absolutely; working with a team of peculiar humans, including a werewolf with a bad temper? Definitely something to be nervous about.

“Aww, Danny, welcome back, brah!” Kono called when he entered the bullpen, huge smile on her face. “I thought we’d be seeing you again.”

 

“That makes one of us,” Danny replied. “Where can I put this?”

“We’re putting you over here for now,” Kono said, leading him towards an empty office, the last of four. “Well, I mean, it’s yours, if you really want to be a part of the team.”

“I wasn’t aware I had a choice.”

“The governor can be very... persuasive when she wants,” Chin said as he walked into Danny’s new office. “Or when I want.”

Danny blinked at him for a moment before he realized just what the other man was insinuating. “You--you picked her brain?!”

“Nah, just suggested that adding you to the team would be a good idea. She thought the whole thing was her idea, no harm done.”

Danny held his hands up, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Back up. McGarrett runs this outfit, yes? So he’s the boss, yadda yadda -- wouldn’t he have to agree to this in order for you to go through with anything?”

“Not if the gov overrides him,” Kono sing-songed, rocking on her heels. “She’s the real boss, he can’t say jack shit to her once she’s decided.”

“Ok, but what happens if he walks in here and Hulks out on me? He doesn’t like me because I’m a _mainlander_ , I doubt that’s changed in two days.”

Chin clapped Danny on the shoulder and grinned. “He’ll get over it; I did pull up your personnel file, just to get an idea of the work you did before you got to HPD, and your results don’t lie: you’re a damned good cop. That and being from the mainland gives you a fresh perspective of the island; I’ve been a cop here for years, and Kono’s a rookie. We know everyone, and everyone knows us, its harder sometimes to get people to cooperate, especially since we’re peculiar.”

“I’m sure they’ll love to cooperate with the ‘haole,’” Danny mumbled. He heard Kono’s angry gasp and just shrugged. “I know what it means, I’m over it. I’m just saying, though, that it’s a point that’s hard to overlook.”

“Let’s worry about that when the time comes,” Chin offered. “We’ll let you get settled, give a shout if you need anything.” The cousins retreated from the office, leaving Danny to glance around. It was spacious, much more so than his old office, with ample room to display his framed photos of Grace and the artwork she often made for him. Slumping into the chair beside the desk, he booted up the computer -- about fifty times nicer than his old once and his laptop combined -- and was greeted with a login screen. 

Shrugging, he unloaded some of the box, wary of completely personalizing the space; if he were the leader of an outfit like this, he’d be _pissed_ if his subordinates made a decision of this size without him... although, considering how keen the cousins were, it made Danny wonder just how badly they needed him, peculiarities aside.

Not knowing what his login info would be, or whether it differentiated from his HPD one, Danny made to seek out Chin. He’d just passed through the doorway when he heard measured footsteps, followed by the double doors opening. Glancing to the side, Danny caught sight of McGarrett striding through the bull-pen. 

Something in Danny’s hindbrain told him to back up, back away into his office and hide; before he had a chance, though, he saw McGarrett pause and sniff, _sniff_ the air like a scenthound, and turn on his heel, eyes bright with rage as he made a beeline towards Danny. 

Danny had grown up with real-life Jersey devils, had met some pretty scary supernaturals in his life, but none of them gave him pause, made him feel afraid like McGarrett did; he could practically _see_ the animal within. He wanted to say something, explain what he was doing there, but the other man was upon him before he had a chance.

“What. The fuck. Are you doing here.”

Danny opened his mouth, eyes wide and panic bubbling up in his throat. Before he could speak, though, the cousins were beside him, flanking, their presence warm and reassuring.

“He’s on the team, boss! Jameson approved the transfer this morning,” Kono explained, tone light. She sounded happy, enthusiastic.

“Did you not get an email?” Chin asked, mock-thoughtful. “Huh, weird, we each got one... anyway, she thought it made more sense for us to be a four-some, and Danny’s credentials are excellent, so it made perfect sense.”

McGarrett’s gaze swept back and forth between the two of them before settling on Danny. Something gleamed in those eyes, turning the odd hazel color almost black. “She did, huh? Interesting. Looks like I’ll have to make a few phone calls, won’t I.”

“You could, but she’ll just give you the long version of what I just told you,” Chin said, stepping forward and taking McGarrett by the elbow. “And you know how long-winded she can get, the woman is a blow-hard, worse even than my Uncle Lau...”

Chin easily lead McGarrett off, and Danny could visibly see the tension melt away from the taller man’s shoulders. Kono chuckled beside him, and he cast her a questioning glance.

“It’s part of the psychic thing,” she explained. “He can send, like, vibes to people, to help calm them down. Think psychic ativan.”

“And McGarrett, he doesn’t know it’s happening?” Danny asked, skeptical. 

“Oh, he knows, there just isn’t a lot he can do about it, it works on a subconscious level. That, and Steve and my cuz go way back. Steve’s dad? Was Chin’s training officer. They’ve known each other for years, since Steve was a kid.” Kono’s gaze softened. “Chin and I are two of only a small few Steve trusts; believe me, no other psychic would get away with what just happened.”

Frowning, Danny watched Chin and McGarrett talk, bent over the surface table. McGarrett’s demeanor was definitely calmer; no more seething, shaking rage. “If Chin hadn’t done that, I’d be dog food, yeah?”

Kono’s eyes narrowed. “Probably? Though normally no, I don’t think so... it’s close to the full moon, brah, bossman always gets tetchy this close to his ‘time of the month.’ Don’t take it personally.”

She sauntered off, leaving Danny to wonder how he could _not_ take something like that personally. Then his brain caught up on ‘time of the month’ and he laughed so hard he had to hold onto the doorframe.

~*~

McGarrett was stoically unwilling to bend to the idea of having Danny as a partner -- which, really? Because Danny _wanted_ to fear for his life daily -- and Danny was ready to have a talk about it, rearrange things, when they caught a break in the McGarrett murder investigation.

“Finally got something back on the bullet fragments,” Chin announced as they gathered around the surface table. “Turns out there’s only a few manufacturers in the world, and they all use a distinct silver alloy, a trademark to distinguish them from the rest.”

He did something complicated on the table, which resulted in photos on the screens. Danny did his best to hide how cool he thought it was.

“There’s one manufacturer on the mainland, two in Russia, and one in China, interestingly enough. Ours came from the one in China, and they” -- another complicated move -- “keep excellent records of customer transactions.”

McGarrett moved to stand in front of the monitors, scanning over the information. “Shi Wei Li,” he muttered. 

“I ran some searches, nothing came up beyond the fact that he’s a he,” Kono said, frowning. “And that he was born in China but emigrated to the US in the 80’s.”

“My Mandarin is rusty, but that name? Roughly translates to ‘wolf slayer.’ That can’t be a coincidence.” Steve frowned.

“Hmm, assumed name to throw us off? Probably knew we’d find out who bought the bullets,” Danny offered, frowning. “Sounds more like a taunt than a name.”

McGarrett sighed, rubbing at his temples. “So aside from this, do we have anything else?”

“There’s a Chinese import-export business that the shipment came in through, says on the manifest that the shipment was picked up there personally by the buyer,” Chin said, thoughtful. “Maybe someone remembers what the buyer looked like, or if they gave a real name.”

“Alright: you guys dig into the transaction and see if anyone else has been purchasing silver bullets in the last, oh, six months or so. Danny, you’re with me.” Steve began marching towards the door, leaving Danny scrambling to catch up.

“Where are we going?” he asked, irritated that he had to take two steps for every one of McGarrett’s. 

“To ask about Shi Wei Li, see if there are any surveillance cameras we can check the feeds on,” Steve replied, condescending. Like he thought Danny was an idiot.

“Whoa, hey, we don’t know if this import-export thing is legit, do we? It could be a front.”

“Chin already texted me their credentials, quit bitching.”

They were on their way out to the car, _Danny’s_ car, and there was another thing to have a good long chat about, when McGarrett’s phone went off, chiming angrily. He stopped, brows furrowed as he dug through his pockets for the device.

“McGarrett,” he snapped, impatient. Danny watched the other man’s face morph from irritation to slack-jawed horror. “Yes ma’am, right away.” He ended the call, a dazed look on his face.

Danny waited a beat before asking “so, I’m assuming there’s been a change of plans?”

“Yeah... apparently there’s been a triple homicide and it’s peculiar in nature,” McGarrett muttered, fiddling with his phone -- texting the rest of the team, Danny surmised, as moments later they were joined in the parking lot.

Kono and Chin hopped into her little car, and McGarrett and Danny got into the Camaro; Danny held onto the ‘sissy bar’ for dear life, as his partner apparently thought he was trying out for NASCAR.

In what seemed like seconds but was really fifteen minutes, they arrived at the crime scene. It was a nondescript, quiet-looking neighborhood, reminding Danny a lot of the house he grew up in... minus the palm trees, of course. The house in question was taped off, and the CSUs were idling around, faces ashen.

A uniform was sitting on the front steps, head in his hands. He glanced up when he heard the team approach. “Commander McGarrett,” he said, nodding in McGarrett’s direction. “It’s... really bad in there.”

“What was your reason for being here?” Kono asked. “Was there a 911 from a neighbor or...”

“Not sure; neighbors to the left are snow-birds, gone for the season. The others have kids and usually their kids play with the boy who lives here. They noticed no one coming in or out for about two days, which they said is extremely unusual.”

Kono glanced at Chin, who nodded and went to speak to the neighbors himself; it wouldn’t take long to read them and get the information they needed.

“Two days? They could’ve been away,” Danny offered, frowning. “Who keeps that close a tab on their neighbors?”

“Normally they wouldn’t,” the uniform replied, shrugging. “But the wife reported hearing strange sounds and seeing... things... in the yard real early this morning. That combined with not seeing the victims... she called, wanted someone over here right away.”

“Who found them, you?” McGarrett asked, arms folded over his chest. _Nice,_ Danny found himself thinking, before mentally shaking himself.

“Uh, yeah... I... you’ll forgive me for not wanting to go back in there, sir. I already lost my lunch twice, I’d rather not go for a three-peat.”

McGarrett just steamrolled by the uniform, leaving Kono and Danny to roll their eyes and snap on gloves before following their fearless leader. 

The inside of the house was dark: shades drawn, lights out, as though the family were turning in for the night. It was also immaculate as far as Danny could see, noting that furniture was undisturbed, framed photos still hung on the walls. It didn’t look like a crime scene at all, and that was what was making Danny’s stomach turn. When things looked almost too normal, that was when the crime was the most horrific.

There was a large front entry way, which boasted a small table for mail and a hutch to hang jackets, and off that, a comfortable looking living room. The three of them flicked on flashlights and carefully made their way through, each pausing here or there to take in some detail. The house was a one-storey, and Danny poked his head into what was presumably a child’s bedroom, the bed still made, toys on the floor. Kono made a noncommittal noise about what could’ve been a second bedroom, done as an office; electronics still in place, desk neat and tidy. 

At the end of the hall was the master bedroom, and Danny’s panic almost overtook him when McGarrett carefully opened the door. The room was much like the others at first glance; there was a reason Danny had made Detective Sergeant, however, and noticed that the bed-clothes were rumpled, the items on the dresser seemed askew. Kono poked her head in the open closet door, and Danny could practically hear her frown. 

“Everything’s been shoved to one side,” she murmured, “all the clothes, the shoes... everything. Like they were trying to make room for something.”

“Maybe they hid in there?” Danny offered, catching movement from the corner of his eye. McGarrett was prowling the far side of the room, where there were a set of French doors, one of which was open slightly. He watched McGarrett _sniff_ around the doors, at the handles, along the floor. He made a triumphant sound and Danny and Kono wandered over, seeing the blood McGarrett had sniffed out. 

It was only a few drops, but then Danny saw a few more by the door, and what looked like drag marks through the grass in the yard. “Alright, let’s get this over with,” he muttered, and stepped over the blood drops and to the door, gently pushing it open. 

The yard was a good size, the grass lush and green; it hadn’t been mowed in a while, and the drag marks were clearly visible. Danny followed them with his eyes, and gasped when he saw where they lead: the shed, whose doors were open, showing the gory scene within. 

“Oh, my god,” he breathed, feeling rather than seeing his teammates come to stand beside him. He heard Kono make an unladylike sound, felt her turn aside and bend to heave into the grass. McGarrett went pale but didn’t show any other sign of being distressed; instead, he walked towards the horror, nostrils flaring as he scented the scene.

The family of three was inside the shed, ripped to pieces and flung onto the walls of the small structure. One could clearly make out that there were three persons, as their heads had all been mounted on the handles of various lawn equipment. Danny could see entrails strung up around the ceiling, and thanked God he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, which had long left his system.

“Who... what did this?” Kono whispered from beside him. “I know there are some peculiars capable but... nothing like this.”

“It was definitely something supernatural in nature,” McGarrett called from behind the shed, frowning as he strode out from behind it. “There’s claw marks on the wood, huge ones.”

“Anything you recognize?” Chin called, having finally caught up to them. He saw Kono’s pallor and gave her a comforting shoulder squeeze, moving to stand beside McGarrett. 

“Possibly a were-beast; a lot bigger than mine, I can tell you that.”

“How d’you know it’s a, uh, a were-beast?” Danny asked. 

McGarrett turned to him, looking down his nose. “Because wild animals don’t have thumbs like we do; when I shift, my hands are halfway between a hand and a paw. I can still use my thumb, just not as well. These claw marks have five distinct lines of contact; a regular animal would only have four.”

Danny opened his mouth to grumble, but was met with the jab of a sharp elbow; Kono. 

“Family next door said they heard what sounded like animals in the yard around three or so this morning,” Chin told them, fingers hovering over a tablet. “This was after two days of zero activity on the property. The son has sports practice, school, the usual, and both the parents work; they are always coming and going. One day they were following their normal routine, the next nothing.”

“Did you pick their brains?” Danny blurted, immediately embarrassed. “I mean--”

“Sort of,” the other man said, grinning slightly before becoming more serious. “I can access people’s memories, if they’re recent enough; I wanted to hear what they heard, maybe see what they saw. Generally I just wanted to calm them. They haven’t seen anything, thankfully, but it’s a lot of commotion and they’re scared.”

“What did the animals sound like?” McGarrett asked, all business. “Anything familiar?”

Chin sighed. “No, just that it was awful, like something sick that was dying. I asked them if it sounded like boar, or cats yowling, but they were pretty adamant it was nothing they ever heard before. They thought it sounded almost human; I was quick to dissuade them.”

“What’s it smell like, boss?” Kono asked, keeping a good distance between herself and the shed.

“Not sure; it’s a jumble right now, though once I’ve had time to sit and analyze it, I might have a better idea.”

They gathered what evidence they could and then gave the all-clear for the coroner to come in and remove the remains. Danny watched CSU come in once that was done, and hoped to heaven he never had to see anything like this again.

~*~

“Listen, I understand you’re upset about having to move your father’s case to the back burner, but--”

“No, Chin, don’t you get it? The person who _murdered my father_ is still out there! I can work that case and still focus on this too.”

Danny winced as he made his way into the bullpen, coffee clutched firmly in hand. More and more cases were being reported of people being slain by peculiar humans, leading the team to believe it was probably a spree killer, maybe even a serial. It didn’t bode well for the innocent, non-violent peculiar humans living on the islands, that was for sure.

“You’re no good to _either_ case if you can’t focus all of your attention,” Chin was saying, anger creeping into his usually calm voice. “Do you think thats what your father wants? For you to be doing sloppy police work?”

Danny had to suppress the urge to mention that Steve was not, in fact, a police officer, almost dropped his coffee when he saw McGarrett surge forward, muscles well-oiled, hands coming to grip tight to Chin’s shirt. He growled, a low, bass tone and Danny shivered at the sound.

“You have no right to tell me what my father would or wouldn’t do,” he hissed, eyes bright with anger. “None. I don’t want to hear that out of you again, you got me?”

Chin regarded him calmly, for all that the other man was practically breathing down his neck. “Yeah, Steve, I got you. Now let go of me, before I give you the mother of all migraines.”

McGarrett stepped back and stomped into his office, closing the blinds. Danny waited a beat before moving to stand beside Chin. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

“That would be wise, yeah,” Chin sighed. “ME got back to us, he’s finished examining the most recent victims; why don’t you and I head down there? Steve needs to cool off.”

The ME turned out to be an eccentric who fancied classical piano and was by most standards, normal -- if only because he wasn’t a peculiar human.

“He’s weird alright,” Danny muttered as they watched the man flutter between the bodies on the tables. Chin bumped their shoulders and did something complicated with his eyebrows before the ME -- Max, Danny thought it was -- came back to them.

“The victims died from acute blood-loss and evisceration,” the bespectacled man told them, gingerly peeling back the sheet covering the body they stood over. Danny squinted at the claw marks, still a livid red against the now pale flesh.

“So they were gutted while they were alive?” he ventured, feeling sick. “The blood in the shed looked fresher than over two days old.”

“There were large amounts of tranquilizer found in all of the victims systems; not enough to kill them, but enough to paralyze and render them helpless.”

_Pattern,_ Chin’s voice whispered in Danny’s head. _Serial then, not spree._

Danny hummed in agreement, sure Chin could sense his worry. Something peculiar and supernatural was running around gutting regular humans, and getting more and more brazen about it. 

“Anything left behind to tell us what sort of, um, person did this?” Danny asked.

“Nothing that I have found. I did take measurements of all the wounds; I will email them to you.”

“Max, off the record, have you seen marks like this before?” Chin asked, voice quiet. “I know you worked primarily with victims of peculiar attacks before you got here.”

Max removed his glasses and wiped at them with a cloth before replacing them. He turned to his computer and beckoned to Chin and Danny, who went to stand beside him.

“While werewolves are typically the most commonly known shape shifters, technically a person with that ability could shift into any animal,” Max began, clicking through various before and after photos of shape shifters. “Here you see a tigress, an elephant, and so on. While a shape shifter does retain some semblance of a thumb -- should the intended shape have paws or claws -- it is not as useful as it would be in the human shape. However, the claws will take on the trait of the animal. Feline claw marks are slightly different than canine, which tend to be easily recognizable against, for example, a bear.”

_Bear?_ Danny heard Chin guess.

“The amount of strength needed to ‘gut’, as you say, a person with one swipe is quite huge. It would require a lot of force. Something large, perhaps like a bear.” Max typed a few things in the computer before a new screen popped up. “A few footprints were found at the last scene, and I took it upon myself to compare them to known were-beast tracks.”

All three studied the photos, Danny and Chin sharing a glance. “A... werebear would be pretty big, right? Those tracks don’t look that huge,” Danny offered, brows furrowing. “Actually, they look kind of... doggish.”

“That was my perception as well,” Max replied. He looked worried. “The indentations don’t lend themselves to something as heavy as a were-bear, either.”

“So what then, it’s got dog feet but bear claws? Maybe some kind of cosmetic surgery?” 

Chin shook his head. “Anything altered while in the were-shape would go back to ‘normal’ once they changed back. Could just be an unusually large wolf. Max, could you send us your comparison photos as well? Steve knows a lot more about werewolves than we do, maybe he can give us an idea.”

Max agreed that he would, and the other two men took their leave. They’d almost made it back to the Camaro when Danny blurted “you don’t really think it was a werewolf, do you?”

Chin waited until they were safely ensconced in the car to reply. “Not really. Steve is the only known werewolf on this island, and any of the others, as far as I know. And when I say ‘known,’ I mean that he’s in the law enforcement database. I’m pretty sure I’d know if he was doing something like this, so I’m going to rule out werewolves. Doesn’t make it any less weird that those prints are canine in nature, though.”

Danny frowned. “Is there any such thing as a hybrid? I mean, back in Jersey I once met a Gryphon, and it was the craziest shit, head of an eagle, chest and forelegs of a lion, rear legs of an eagle, eagle _wings_...”

“I’ve never seen one, and to be honest I’m not sure it’s possible. Shape-shifting is an inherited trait, it can’t be passed from a bite or anything like that; if two different species of were-human come together, either they can’t conceive or the child is born as an ordinary human. Mother nature doesn’t allow mixing.”

“So if not a wolf, then what? Werecat? Werebear?”

Chin rubbed at his temples. “Like I said, Steve is a lot better with this than I am; he’s very good at being able to tell what sort of were-human made tracks. We’ll have to bring it to him.”

Danny grunted in agreement and they drove back in the direction of HQ. As they were driving, Chin’s phone went off. He checked the ID, grinned, and put it on speaker. “Howzit, cuz.”

“Hey! So I’m looking into the make-up of the blood we collected from the first crime scene? And there’s the three family sources, as well as one non-related one.”

“And?” Danny called, flushing when Kono chuckled. 

“ _And_ it is definitely peculiar, of that I’m sure. I’m still working on figuring out what it came from, but when I know, you guys will know.”

“Roger that,” Chin said by way of ending the call. “She’s doing alchemy,” he offered when Danny went to ask what lab she was at. “There’s a room in the CSU lab that’s just for us, or rather just for her, since some of the stuff she uses is... um... less than kosher. Magic tends to scare the science guys.”

“I can imagine it would,” Danny replied, grinning. “I bet its really cool to watch though.”

Chin grinned back. “Oh believe me, it is.”

They spent the rest of the drive speculating on what sort of were-beast left their DNA. McGarrett was in his office when they arrived, speaking to someone on the phone. Since they were right across from each other, Danny could see piles of paperwork strewn over the other man’s desk; his father’s casefile. Something in Danny’s chest tightened; he hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he’d treat Steve’s father’s case like it was his own father, and knowing they’d made little to no headway hurt.

He ducked his head into the other man’s office and waited until the call was finished to ask “anything there you want me to help with? Since I was on your dad’s case originally anyway.”

McGarrett heaved a heavy sigh, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms up over his head. This caused his shirt to come up a bit, allowing Danny a tantalizing peek at the tanned skin beneath.

“If you really want. Apparently it has to take a backseat to these, these slaughter cases. Speaking of which, what’d the ME say?”

“Just that the marks on the victims are consistent with coming from the same attacker, and that said attacker is gigantic. He’s sending us some comparison photos he has, of tracks found at one of the scenes. Actually, Chin thought it’d be good for you to take a look at them, since you’ve got, like, tingly were-senses.”

McGarrett quirked a brow at ‘tingly’ and nodded, moving to follow Danny back out into the bull-pen. Chin had already called up the information Max had sent over, and it was a lot easier to examine on their large screens.

Standing beside the table, McGarrett carefully scrutinized each photo, sliding them out of the way on the table itself to bring the next up on the screens. Danny watched the frown lines in the other man’s face deepen.

“It’s strange, I’d know wolf tracks anywhere, and these are similar in shape, but the way the weight is distributed is odd. The indentations, they have emphasis on on the back of the foot, not the front.”

“Like they’re walking heavy on their heels?” Danny offered. “Maybe to maintain balance? If they’re big on top, that might be why.”

“Maybe... generally speaking, I don’t make a habit of going around on my hind legs once I’ve shifted; you’re right about balancing, but not because of being top-heavy. If you’ve ever seen a trick dog walk on it’s back legs, you know immediately they aren’t designed to walk that way, they have to be trained. As humans we use our arms to help us balance; the shoulder joint of a dog doesn’t rotate in the same way, it makes it harder to get around on just two legs.”

Chin frowned. “So the person who made these tracks, they might not necessarily be accustomed to needing to get around on all fours, so they’re trying to walk on just two like they would as a human. Maybe a new shifter?”

McGarrett shook his head. “I started shifting young, it kind of just happens. And since I was little, any tracks I left were little as well. These look like they were made by an adult.”

“They were,” Kono called, making her way towards them, flash drive in hand. “I’ve got the results back on the blood samples.” She plugged in the drive, selected the file, and brought it up on the screens. The faces of the first three victims -- thankfully pre-slaughter -- appeared.

“The first set of victims were human through and through; the fourth piece of DNA I found was definitely not... at least not entirely.”

McGarrett made a face. “Not entirely? I know peculiar DNA has a slightly different look to it from ordinary humans, but it is still essentially _human_ DNA. You wouldn’t find wolf genes spliced with mine.”

Kono grinned. “That’s because you were born that way; the fourth contributor? Wasn’t born peculiar. It’s almost like someone was tinkering around in a lab, Frankenstein’s monster style.” A new page popped up, Kono’s nimble fingers flying over the keys. “It seems our first victim, Bradley Tanner, had moved his family here to work on a project being tested by Mersche Industries. Originally he’d done testing on various household chemicals and products and the effects on, uh, animals. Because evidently some companies still do that. And -- this one is for you, Steve -- he was very good at splicing stuff together.”

“Mersche...” Danny murmured. “I’ve heard of them, they were in the news a while back, I must’ve been just a kid at the time. There was a fire at one of their factories in New York, just over the bridge, it was so big my Pa’s firehouse got called in. When he got back, he said everyone had to wear special protective gear and get a chemical bath at the end, to rinse off any junk that might’ve gotten into their suits.”

“That sounds like some hazmat stuff,” Chin offered. He typed a few things into the computer, and the Mersche Industries homepage popped up. “Looks like they were well known for doing animal testing and experiments in Austria; government cracked down on them, Johan Mersche moved the company here and apparently started fresh.”

“Couldn’t have been that fresh,” Kono said. “Just because our government is saying everything they do is legal, doesn’t mean that it is; we’ve seen payouts before. I think something big went down over there, and this is their way of cleaning up the mess; Bradley Tanner was on the project, he was killed so he wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Why kill his family, though? Why kill his wife and son, who presumably knew nothing about what he did at work? For all they knew, he was testing the amount of suds made from dish soap.” Danny began pacing, anger level rising along with the temperature in the room. “I can see removing him from the equation, but all of them? Look how much attention it drew.”

“None of the other victims had families at home,” Kono supplied, calling up the information for the others. “They were all found alone, though in some cases a family pet was found killed as well.”

“Blood evidence was collected from all the scenes, right?” McGarrett asked, chewing his bottom lip. “Was there anything found in those?”

“No anomalies that I’m aware of, but then again, the blood was just collected from the scene, not from the victims’ clothing or anything, could be some foreign DNA on that. I’ll look into it,” Kono said, hurrying to her office. Chin’s hands flew over the table, brow tightly furrowed as he quickly scanned the information from the other victims.

“Everyone else that was killed had something to do with Mersche Industries,” he revealed. “It doesn’t look like all of them were scientists, but a few were. A couple just worked in the offices as secretaries.”

“They tend to know the most, especially when it comes to their boss’ business,” Danny said. “They make all the appointments, schedule the meetings, take notes... I watch ‘Mad Men,’ ok, I know these things.”

“Valid reason to take them out, is what you’re saying. Has anyone heard anything about the Mersche buildings being shut down due to lack of staff? Because I haven’t.” Chin opened Google and typed in a search. “Yup, that’s what I thought; our victims were all a part of the same development team. The rest of the building is open for business.”

“Fifteen people die and no one thinks they should be concerned? What the fuck,” Danny muttered.

“They probably think they’re safe, since they weren’t on the team with the others,” Steve replied. “Alright Danny, let’s go check out this Mersche Industries.”

~*~

Mersche Industries was sleek and white, much like any Apple product, and the industrialism of it all made Danny itch. Steve had used his military clout to get them passed security, Danny flashing his badge. The guard let them in, radioing to someone in the main building to let them know they were coming.

A middle-aged woman with chopsticks in her hair greeted them in a large, marbled lobby. There was a statue of Johan Mersche in the center, carved from black marble, the only dark colored thing in the entire large room.

“Gentlemen, welcome to Mersche Industries, how may I assist you?” the woman asked, voice cultured.

“We’ve got some questions regarding the projects being worked on by the scientists that, um, were killed recently,” Danny told her. He knew he came off as more personable than Steve did, had suggested maybe he do most of the talking, unless anyone they encountered decided to be not exactly forthcoming.

The woman blinked at him, her perfect smile slipping for a moment. “Oh, I’m sorry, but that information is classified. You understand.”

Steve chuckled; it was a cold sound. “Sure, we understand. Do _you_ understand that we can get a warrant? I don’t think you want us to do that, and I also don’t think you want to be charged with withholding evidence. I suggest you unlock that information.”

The woman continued to stare at them before moving to stand behind the lobby’s main desk. She picked up a phone and called someone, probably some bigwig, and spoke to them briefly before returning to stand before them.

“We want only to assist you in your investigation; please follow me, I’ll take you up to their labs. I’m afraid it will take some time to gain access to all of their research.”

“Fine, fine, we can see the labs in the meantime,” Danny offered, glancing at Steve, who’s face was a composed, blank mask. The woman lead them toward a bank of elevators and accompanied them up to the sixth floor, where she left them with a laboratory assistant. 

“Kai will take you around,” the woman told them before the elevator doors closed, taking her back downstairs.

“Rude much?” Danny muttered, glancing at Kai. “Hi there, I’m Detective Danny Williams, this is Commander Steve McGarrett. I believe you’re supposed to show us around?”

Kai nodded, complexion pale. “Y-yeah, this way, please.” He made his way down the corridor towards a set of double doors, presumably what separated them from the labs. The lab assistant was young, Danny noted, barely out of college, maybe a grad student working on a research project. He also seemed nervous, though that might’ve been because McGarrett was doing his patented Navy SEAL Scary Stare of Doom.

“Th-these are the product testing labs,” Kai said, gesturing towards a bay of windows, a long room with multiple stone-topped tables, metal counters running the length and what looked like motel room fridges with glass doors on top. To Danny they resembled the quintessential lab, the sort of set one would see in a movie or on TV.

“No one working?” McGarrett asked, tone conversational but expression hard, daring the young man to lie to them.

Kai blinked at him before swallowing thickly. “Um, we aren’t actually testing any products at the moment, sir.”

“Maybe you don’t have anyone to do the work, since several of your scientists were murdered,” Steve told him, voice cold, eyes calculating. Danny groaned internally; Kai paled even more, and he was afraid the young man might pass out on them.

“I’m sure those folks weren’t working in this department, and I’m sure you know that, don’t you, Kai? So why don’t you direct us to the genetics and DNA areas, where your fallen colleagues worked.” Danny kept his voice conversational, soothing, in total counterpoint to McGarrett.

The lab assistant’s eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, obviously unsure. Danny surmised that the poor kid had probably been instructed to show them specific labs and work areas and not what they really needed to see. Stepping closer, he put a hand on Kai’s shoulder, adding some extra warmth, enough to comfort.

“Kai, I get it, there’s some stuff happening here we aren’t ‘sposed to see. But listen, fifteen people are dead and the only connection is this place. You don’t have to go in with us, just show us where they were working. You can tell your boss we forced you, because, technically, _not_ showing us is sort of like withholding evidence, which is a big deal.”

“Not cooperating could also lead us to believe you’re involved, you wouldn’t want to implicate yourself, would you?” McGarrett mentioned, eyebrows quirking. Kai gasped, shaking his head and hurrying down the corridor, beckoning to them. Danny grinned at McGarrett, who winked at him, before hurrying after.

The labs they were looking for were separated from the rest by two heavy doors, the rooms beyond dark. Kai stepped out of the way after unlocking the doors, watched Danny and McGarrett enter, and fled; Danny didn’t blame him. The labs smelled sort of musty, like wet animal, and while Danny just wrinkled his nose at it, McGarrett made a coughing sound. It must’ve been ten times stronger to him.

Finding a light, Danny flicked it on and blinked at the sudden brightness. The lab resembled the ones they’d passed, save for the animal cages lining one wall. There were tethers on the center tables, reminding Danny of a dog groomers’ work station; it made him sick. There were cabinets along the other wall, and he headed in that direction, snapping on a pair of gloves. Opening and closing them, he found only random supplies. Behind him, he heard McGarrett sniffing along the cages, long, deep inhales, followed by a shuffle to the next set of cages.

“Danny.”

Turning, Danny saw that McGarrett had stopped towards the end of the row, where what looked like tiny cages were stacked. Joining him, Danny frowned. The last sets of cages were very small, might’ve once held mice or something; seemed out of place from the rest, which were large enough to hold dogs, cats, monkeys...

“Does this wall seem strange to you?” McGarrett asked, staring at the corner, eyes darting over the back wall.

“Um... looks like an odd place for a bookcase, in my opinion.”

“There’s still scent here; it smells human, Danny.”

Baffled, they shoved at the bookcase, and found a door hidden behind, a heavy metal one with a one-foot-by-one-foot window at the top. There had once been a padlock, but someone had clipped it, the lock dangling to one side. Sharing a look, McGarrett reached for the handle and gave it a tug, Danny unholstering his weapon -- just in case.

The door swung open, and even Danny had to step back at the odor: unwashed, dirty skin and hair, human waste. McGarrett growled at the sound, prowling further inside, gesturing for Danny to follow him after a minute.

“Did they really keep people in here?” he whispered, looking around.

“Smells like it,” McGarrett grit out, clearly angry, his eyes glittering with it. “Not sure how many at once, but it smells like quite a few people have been through here, men, women.”

“You wouldn’t be able to tell how old they were, or anything, would you? By smell?”

McGarrett frowned, thoughtful. “People do smell different at different ages, but in here they all smell the same; no scent of children or babies, no scent of the elderly.”

“So maybe middle aged then? Young adult to, hmm, maybe forties or so? Teenagers reek too, last time I checked.”

McGarrett grinned at that. “Yeah, they do. I think you’re right... but that doesn’t tell us why.”

Danny frowned hard, re-holstering his weapon. “Obviously they were testing something on humans.”

“Obviously.”

“How in the hell... have you ever seen those ads for drug studies? Antidepressants, diet pills, sleeping pills, that sort of thing?” Danny asked, tapping his chin. “They usually compensate anyone who participates, might’ve lured people in that way?”

“Maybe,” McGarrett sniffed the air again. “I don’t smell anything like that, though. And before you ask, yes, I can smell certain chemical compounds in drugs, and no, I was never used as a drug sniffing dog.”

Danny grinned. “What about bombs?”

“I can smell certain accelerants, yes.”

“Ok, so they weren’t testing the conventional medications... I mean, clearly it was something wacky, why else lock a person in a room like this? Look around babe, it’s like a bunker.”

Turning in a circle told them the whole room was metal, large bolts and rivets making it almost impossible to get out once locked inside. It felt like a tomb.

Danny took out his phone and snapped a few pictures to go over once they were back at HQ, gritting his teeth as the flash showed what looked like a small cot and a bucket in the corner. He knew what the cot was for, and the idea of the bucket... he needed to remove himself from that room. McGarrett followed soon after, waiting while Danny took photos of the cages as well.

As they made their way back to the elevators, McGarrett glanced over. “Felt a little warm in there; you ok?”

“Yeah, just... the idea of treating people, a human being like some kind of... animal just horrifies me.”

“Medications are eventually tested on people, Danny.”

“Yeah, but they willing participate in it!” Danny shouted, waving his arms. “They aren’t locked in a metal box with a bucket to shit in, like some kind of prisoner.”

“There’s a reason why, and we’re going to find out what it is, and who did it. And when we do, we can make sure it never happens again,” McGarrett said, looking Danny in the eye, face earnest. He couldn’t argue with that, following the taller man back down to the lobby and out to the car.

They’d gotten in and had just left the property when McGarrett gasped, loud, and pulled them over. Danny yelped and grabbed for the ‘sissy bar,’ head whipping around to stare at McGarrett in shock.

“Are you fucking crazy?!” he shouted, gasping, heart racing.

McGarrett swiveled around in his seat so he could face Danny, and his eyes were wide with shock. “I just realized something, something potentially huge.”

“And you couldn’t just pull over safely like a normal person?!”

“Danny, would you just listen to me? When the name Mersche first came up, it sounded familiar but I couldn’t figure out why, I’d never heard of them, or that’s what I thought. It just hit me, I _have_ seen the name before! My dad was working on a case, the _last_ case he worked before he-- it had something to do with Mersche Industries!”

Gaping at him across the center console, Danny wracked his brain, mentally going over all the evidence that had been collected from McGarrett Sr.’s murder. “I don’t remember seeing anything about--”

“That’s because you don’t have any of his case files, but I do. Any time he was working on a case, he kept a copy of the file at home, locked in his desk, so he could work on it off hours. I was going through the desk and found it, didn’t think anything of it. But that’s what it was, Danny, he was working on something having to do with Mersche.”

“We need to get that file to HQ,” Danny murmured, shocked. “Oh my god, Steve! What if this is related to--”

McGarrett looked pained but also surprised, which was understandable because up until this point, Danny had never called him by his first name.

“I don’t want it to be, but I have a feeling my father’s death is directly related to these slaughter murders,” Steve replied, shoulders slumping. “Ok, you call Chin and let him know we’re stopping off and to have my father’s murder case file open for when we get back.”

The Camaro roared back to life, and Steve took them speeding off down the road, Danny gripping the ‘sissy bar’ with one hand and holding his phone to his ear with the other, jerkily letting Chin know of their discoveries. For once, the other man actually sounded shocked.

Apparently even a psychic hadn’t seen this one coming.

~*~

The McGarrett Sr file was up on the screens when Danny and Steve got back, and Chin took Jack’s Mersche file and scanned it in the instant Steve handed it over.

“Just so I’m on the same page,” Kono said, tapping a fingertip on the surface table. “Your dad was working on some case and Mersche was involved, and the theory is that’s what got him killed? Why would they do that?”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know, though after what Danny and I saw there today, it wouldn’t surprise me if he uncovered something huge.”

“Oh that reminds me! I took some pictures,” Danny offered, holding up his phone. Kono took it and placed it on the surface table, somehow accessing the recent photo file and putting them up on the screens.

“That is seriously magical,” he told her, grinning. Kono rolled her eyes.

“It’s not magic, brah, it’s technology.”

“Ok, your dad’s last case file is all scanned in, let’s see what he was working on,” Chin announced, coming to stand beside Kono, hands flying over the surface table. One by one, case notes, reports, and photos appeared on the screen, layering themselves beside the murder investigation files.

Steve stepped closer, eyes scanning the reports. “Looks like Mersche had come under fire -- again -- for animal cruelty issues, which makes sense considering all the empty animal cages we saw.”

Chin manipulated the surface table, and a close-up of Jack’s notes came to the front. “Apparently, an unnamed source was trying to blow the whistle about _human_ testing too, the illegal kind. Looks like maybe they were experimenting on people? Or your dad thought so.”

“There was a room, in the lab, with a hidden door,” Danny told them. Chin sifted through the photos until the ones of the room showed up. “They’d put a bookcase in front of it, but Steve found it anyway. It was maybe ten-by-ten, and it _stank_ , like someone hadn’t seen a shower in weeks, maybe months.”

“More than one person had been there, too,” Steve added. “It was hard to differentiate, but I’m thinking at least fifteen, if not twenty.”

“Looks like an anonymous tip had come in that people were being lured in for drug trials, and injected with something that made them sick. The whistle-blower didn’t get into too much detail, just that the people who were injected disappeared after,” Kono said, eyes skimming the notes. “No formal complaints were ever lodged by the supposed participants, and Mersche, when questioned, denied everything, obviously.”

“Clearly your dad sensed something more was going on,” Chin said, quiet, watching Steve carefully. “If the wrong people found out he was taking the allegations seriously, I mean, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that a big company like Mersche wouldn’t go so far as murder to shut him up.”

“There’s something I don’t get, though,” Danny piped up, raising a hand. “If we’re officially saying the slaughter murders are Mersche’s doing, why suddenly change MO? They’d never used silver before... I mean, I know a werewolf could technically heal from a regular bullet wound, but--”

“The evidence shows that a peculiar human killed those people,” Steve said, voice even. “If you’re going to compare raw strength, a human stands no chance against a shifter; the strength you gain post-shift is... preternatural. A shifter against another shifter is more fair, but messier, louder. My dad would’ve known immediately if another shifter entered the house, and his first reaction would’ve been to shift himself, to take on the intruder. It’s our natural instinct to fight for our territory. A human won’t do that, they’d rather just point and shoot. And if they already knew what they were dealing with, they’d have known to have silver bullets.”

“So, what, Jack’s murder is unrelated because of a different MO?” Kono asked, frowning. “I don’t buy that. I think the manner of the killing was different because if a cop gets killed the way those fifteen people were, it makes huge headlines, werewolf or not. But being shot in his home? It’s more plausible, could be linked to a past case, whatever. No, I think Mersche definitely killed your dad to shut him up, Steve, but they did it differently to lead us off the trail.”

“There wasn’t a trail at that point, though,” Chin pointed out, “no one had been slaughtered until well after. If you hadn’t been going through your dad’s desk, you’d never had made the connection at all. We need to take a step back, look at it from another angle...” he rearranged the photos and files on the screens, frowning thoughtfully.

“What if the slaughter murders are the result of the testing?” Danny asked, more to himself than to the team.

“What?” Steve replied, turning his full attention to the shorter man.

“Hear me out, ok? Your dad hears allegations of experiments involving humans at Mersche Industries, the source is anonymous, he can’t find anyone that’ll talk, so he does some digging on his own, quite a bit of it.” Danny gestures at all the files on the screen. “Some head honcho at Mersche finds out, gets nervous because no one should be digging around in this, least of all a seasoned cop. So, they send someone out to take care of it, someone who obviously knows about the werewolf thing. Several months later, these murders are happening, they’re obviously supernatural in nature, and they too are related to Mersche Industries. What if the were-beasts doing the killing were the _humans being experimented on._ ”

This last was met with silence as the team tried to absorb the idea. Steve eventually let out a strained chuckle, shaking his head. “Impossible. You can’t create more shifters by pumping a human full of drugs, that’s not how it works. If I bit you, Danny, you’d never turn into a werewolf, no matter how many times I did it.”

“But what if they found a way? These were _scientists_ , Steve, brilliant minds! Who better to find a way? And hey, remember Bradley Tanner, the DNA splicing guy? He’d have been perfect for this.” Danny argued, arms waving. His frustration was high, causing his temperature to rise.

Steve shook his head again. “We’d have found something in the DNA evidence, the blood evidence, that there was something weird floating around in there There was nothing.”

Kono cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “That’s... not entirely true. I did find something strange, but I didn’t think anything of it... it wasn’t chemicals, it was... magical.”

“Magical?” Chin repeated, brow furrowing. “I wasn’t aware you could _inject_ magic.”

“You can’t, unless you do something to it. Guys, science? Is a lot like magic; chemistry is the mixing of different things to create a reaction, right? Well, that’s alchemy, except that with alchemy you create spells, potions, instead of just chemical reactions. If the magic here was mixed with, I don’t know, some kind of chemical compound, something to make them able to put it in a syringe, there’s no reason they wouldn’t have been able to inject it.”

“Are there really spells to turn people into shifters?” Steve asked, skeptical. “Because I’m sure the military would be all over that.”

“Evidently there is,” Chin said, gesturing towards the screens. “Mersche found a way, because as we’ve said, the footprints and claw marks found at the slaughter scenes don’t fit with any shifters we’ve ever seen. That could be because they were genetically engineered in a lab, a mixing of various traits to get something bigger, faster, deadlier.”

“If that really is true... we have a huge problem,” Danny sighed, rubbing at his temples. “If between fifteen and twenty people were experimented on and injected, that’s an equal number of monsters running around.”

“There’s no guarantee it would’ve taken for all of them,” Kono mentioned. “I can go back over what blood evidence we have, the DNA findings, see if there are any similarities. There are so many blood types, and if not every blood type was compatible, then not everyone would’ve been able to shift at the end.”

“There’s a reason scientists go through so many little white mice,” Chin added, cringing.

Kono hurried off to the CSU lab to go back over the DNA evidence. Chin’s hands flew speedily over the surface table, eyes flickering as he took in and organized all of the information on the screens. They way he moved so seamlessly with the technology made Danny nervous; the other man was tapping into the infrastructure, the machine one with his brain. He’d done it a few times before, and it was usually a cue that Danny and the rest of the team were on their own. 

Steve went into his office, slumping down onto the couch, obviously exhausted. Danny went in after him, perching on the edge of the desk.

“So what now?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

Steve lifted his head from where it had been tipped back against the back of the sofa. “We wait. Chin’s using two brains, the computer’s and his own, to correlate the information and find more connections, but it takes time. Kono has to compare all the DNA evidence and look for similarities... until they come back with something we have to sit tight.”

Grinning, Danny folded his arms across his chest. “Something tells me you aren’t the ‘sit around and wait’ type.”

Steve tentatively grinned back. “Not really, no. What else can we do?”

Huffing a breath, Danny stood, extending his arms up over his head and stretching up onto his tip-toes, grunting. As he came down, he thought he saw Steve quickly avert his gaze, but didn’t think anything of it. “I dunno. Unless there are other leads we can follow up on, I’ve got nothing.”

“Hmm, might be.” Steve rose and went to his desk, typing something into his computer. “Mersche sent an email with the research the dead scientists were doing... and it looks like they sent us the watered down, practically blank version. How fucking helpful of them,” Steve spat, slapping his palms down on the desk. “Fuckers.”

“What we need are the names of the people in the studies, contact information or something,” Danny said, pacing in the office. “I mean, there’s gotta be a paper-trail somewhere, right? How’d Mersche find these people? What sort of campaign did they use to draw people in for the experiments? It had to be under false pretenses, obviously... maybe an ad in the paper, or online?”

“Maybe... it’d be buried by now if it was online, though...”

Danny snapped his fingers, eyes lighting up. “If they put an ad in the paper, they would’ve had to pay for it, and the section in the classifieds for human lab rats isn’t huge. We can call, see if they have anything on file.”

Steve nodded, chewing at his lower lip. “Ok, but that still only gives us the ad itself, not the people who responded to it.”

“It does if they were instructed to phone a call center and not the actual company, or a secretary. This would have to be scheduled, right? Come on, you walk into that place and see people being kept in a ten-by-ten foot box, you aren’t gonna run screaming? They had to time it, dress it up so people wouldn’t get scared.” Danny’s hands were slicing through the air as he spoke, prompting Steve to smile a little.

“You’re saying there had to be contact info on the ad. And, if I remember correctly, the person placing the ad has to fill out a form with their name and whatever. Ok, yeah, let’s do it.”

Smiling, Danny clapped Steve on the back as they left the office, noting that Chin was still wrapped up with the computer. He hoped they’d get somewhere with the print ad thing, because if not they were back to square one.

~*~

As luck would have it, none of the smaller newspapers on the island had a record of running any such ad, leaving just the Honolulu Star Advertiser. Steve had drawn the short straw, sitting across from a very elderly man who was in charge of running the classified ads. Danny had to bite his fist to keep from laughing.

“Sir, I just need to see some sort of record of the ad being placed. Please.” Steve’s jaw was clenched tight, it was obvious he was gritting his teeth in an attempt to keep himself civil.

The man peered at him from out of his coke bottle glasses, skeptical. “Well, since you are police, I don’t suppose it’ll hurt... you wouldn’t mind showing me your badges again, would you?”

Before Steve could completely lose it, Danny stepped forward, putting his badge on the desktop with a little more force than necessary. “Sir, it is _very_ important that we see the contents of that ad, and maybe any other ads placed on the same day. We’re trying to track down some very bad people, and you not cooperating is getting in the way of that.”

“Yeah,” Steve chimed in. “We could arrest you for that.”

Danny groaned inwardly, wanted to mention that while they _could_ technically do that, they wouldn’t actually, but the threat must’ve done it’s job, because the man moved with more speed than he’d shown in the last half an hour.

“Here, all the ads placed on that day. Everyone fills out the same form.” The man placed a slim folder on the desk, wary.

“How are they allowed to pay for it?” Danny asked, shifting through the folder. “Check, credit card, cash?”

“Credit card, mostly, I have a reader here, followed by cash. Don’t usually like to take checks, but we will if they don’t have anything else.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, snapping up the folder before heading out the door. Danny blinked after him before extending a handshake to the old man. 

“Sorry about him, he’s uh... still adjusting to civilian life.”

“Fine, fine, just... go, now. Please.”

Danny saluted and followed Steve out the door, meeting up with him in the parking lot, where the taller man had opened the folder on the hood of the car, scanning over the forms.

“Anything yet?”

“So far nothing like what we’re looking for. Check out the form, though: the person placing the ad has to fill out a section about themselves, contact information in case there’s a problem with the ad itself. They also have to write in how they’re paying, and if it _is_ a check or credit card, the number gets filled in here, at the bottom.”

Danny frowned at the form in Steve’s hand -- someone looking for engine parts for a lawnmower -- before tapping the folder with his finger. “That would definitely lead us to someone, but it could be an intern for all we know.”

“It’s kind of expensive to run an ad in the paper. My sister said we should put an obituary in for my dad-- if you want more than just a little one-by-one inch square, it’s a lot of money. I doubt they’d made the intern pay for it, so probably a company credit card.”

Together they sifted through the pile, Danny whistling when he came across something more to their liking. “Oh babe, I think I found it.”

“Yeah?” Steve perked up. “What’s it say?”

“Listen to this, ‘renowned pharmaceutical company is looking for men and women over the age of twenty-five to participate in a study showing the effects of caffeine pills on OTC medications.’ Huh, that sounds... dumb.”

Steve frowned. “It does sound kinda dumb... but it also sounds _safe_ , which is what they were going for.”

Scanning the rest of the ad, Danny continued “‘please call our secretary at yadda yadda company phone to schedule an appointment. This will be a double-blind study.’ Double blind? Isn’t that when neither the participants nor the scientists know who’s the control and who isn’t?”

“I think so... ok so we were right, they did have to call to make an appointment. When we were there before, there was a reception desk in the lobby, right? Maybe that’s who was making the appointments.”

“Maybe... however” -- Danny glanced at his watch, frowning -- “it’s well past quitting time, so we’d have to wait until... Monday to go in and ask, as today is Friday and tomorrow starts the weekend.”

Rather than get upset like Danny anticipated, Steve only nodded and dug out his phone. He scanned through his contacts before selecting one and making a call. Danny heard it connect, heard a female voice say “hello?” but before he could hear anything else, Steve turned away, pacing away from the Camaro.

Watching his body language, Danny realized this was someone Steve knew, and knew well, maybe even intimately. He spoke with an easy affection, and something in Danny’s stomach tightened. He could feel his temperature begin to rise, mentally scolded himself about being jealous over something ridiculous, and started taking deep breaths. Steve wasn’t his, there was no evidence to suggest Steve was even attracted to guys, let alone short, loud-mouthed cops from New Jersey. No, he had a little crush, that was all, he needed to just suck it up and get over it.

Steve chose that moment to saunter back, a small smile on his face. “So my contact in Naval intel said she might be able to do some, uh, creative research for us, we might not have to wait the weekend.”

“She did, huh? What’s she gonna do, hack into Mersche’s system?”

Grinning fully now, Steve shrugged. “It’s off the books, I have no idea. Whatever saves us some time, right?”

Nodding, Danny got into the car after gathering up the folder and it’s contents, Steve jingling the keys almost merrily as he made his way around the front. His whole demeanor seemed to have changed, into that of a man who--

“Did you make a date with this woman, too?” Danny blurted, uncaring that he was prying.

Steve smirked. “Maybe. She’s stationed at Pearl, haven’t seen her since I’ve been back, so we may try and get together.”

Danny held off on asking if that meant that night, biting his tongue instead. It wasn’t any of his business anyway.

~*~

The weekend passed slowly, no calls with breaks in the case, everyone working on individual projects in the meantime. Danny took Grace out for a father-daughter day, but he was preoccupied, mind spinning in circles over the slaughter case and Steve’s potential ‘date’ with his former colleague. Grace seemed to pick up on this, though she didn’t say anything. She still kissed him goodbye when he dropped her off back at Rachel and Stan’s, still said she loved him. For that, Danny would always be grateful.

Once home alone, he decided to go over what they had, see if there was anything they might’ve missed. Of course, reading the case files made him think of Steve, and thinking of Steve lead to some... interesting developments, if Danny was being totally honest with himself. Interesting, but not surprising. He ends up in his shower, the only room that has some modicum of sound proofing, and takes care of business, feeling the water evaporate due to his heat as quickly as it was coming out of the shower head.

Though getting off relieved some tension, it didn’t stop the jittery, itchy need to _move_ , be doing something. Sighing, Danny pulled on some clothes -- an old concert tee and ripped jeans -- and went out to the car. It was late, but maybe a drive would do him some good, help clear his head.

Cruising around with Steve had given him a bit more confidence over where things were, so taking a late-night drive didn’t seem like a bad idea, though he made sure to tuck his badge and gun into the glovie, just in case. Humming, Danny turned the car towards the beach, thinking the cool sea air might help.

Zoning out, he came to a stop at a light and realized he was... sort of close to Steve’s. He recognized the street names as the addresses surrounding the McGarrett Sr crime scene, and without meaning to, drove in that direction. The dashboard clock told him that it was a little past eleven, which may or may not be late when one was potentially on a romantic date with a presumably beautiful woman. (Danny had to presume, though considering how hot Steve was, it seemed only logical he’d date and or have relations with someone equally as attractive).

Steve’s house was right on the beach, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch for Danny to be in the area; there was a public beach a few streets over, and technically, if he followed the wide swath of sand, he’d eventually come to the residential part of the area and the McGarrett house.

Pulling into the public beach lot, Danny noted the parking restrictions -- there wasn’t one -- and got out, locking the car behind him. He stood at the edge of the parking lot and squinted down the sand. The moon was out, not quite full, but close, and the sky was clear. _Good night to be a werewolf,_ Danny thought. _Maybe not so good for a romantic evening._ Shrugging, he turned right and headed down onto the sand, toeing out of his sneakers after only a few minutes, grumbling about the sand. He tied the laces and looped them around his neck and continued, kicking at stones and bending to examine a shell that caught his eye in the moonlight.

Before long, the public beach ended and the beach itself thinned, giving way to homes on the right instead of stretches of parking or small surf shacks. Danny hadn’t been to Steve’s house before, had no idea what the back looked like... but that didn’t mean he couldn’t keep going. 

Continuing on, he frowned, pausing to listen. The only sounds were the waves, a few night insects, and his own footsteps... but underneath that had been another sound, a second set of footsteps, though they sounded different from Danny’s own. He kept on, keeping an ear out and still hearing the strange footsteps. It was hard not to feel uneasy, cop or no, though he was sure if who or whatever it was got too close, he could always tell them to get lost.

Something was telling him that wouldn’t be enough, though, and Danny cursed silently to himself; he’d left his gun in the car. Gritting his teeth, he tried to maintain a normal pace. He knew, though, thanks to Steve’s weird quirks, that if the individual following him was a shape-shifter they’d be able to smell his fear. 

It occurred to him to make some light, but after glancing at the row of homes to the right, he was reluctant to do so. In a perfect world the inhabitants of those homes would be fast asleep, but Danny’s life was far from perfect, and it would be just his luck someone would be awake and see a walking flame-thrower on the beach. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he squinted at the moon-lit sand behind him, frowning. The beach behind was empty, though if he looked hard enough he could see a second set of footprints in the sand. There were dunes and then grass leading up to the homes, but the sea grass wasn’t tall enough to hide a large shifter, causing Danny to wonder if that was, in fact, what was following him.

A low growl, almost a whisper, made Danny stop dead, freezing and listening. The waves never sounded so loud, crashing almost violently against the shore; they seemed to drown out everything but Danny’s own heartbeat, which was hammering in his chest. He turned in a slow circle, eyes opened as wide as he could get them, scanning the area around him, peering into the darkness. The house he’d stopped in front of had a few lights on, but they looked like nightlights more than anything, and their soft glow didn’t extend beyond the lanai. 

There came the growl again, and Danny tensed, readying himself to light up the beach.

“Danny? Hey, Danny, is that you?”

He must’ve jumped six feet in the air, whirling to find _Steve,_ of all people, making his way down to the beach from the house.

“Are you crazy? You scared the shit out of me!” Danny hissed, still on high alert. Was it Steve who’d been growling?

“Yeah? How d’you think I feel, hearing and smelling someone on my property,” the taller man replied, shrugging. “What’re you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sleep, decided to take a drive, ended up down at the public beach,” Danny said, distracted, frowning at the sand behind him, to Steve’s left.

“Ok, and you walked all the way down to my house?” Steve frowned.

“Don’t flatter yourself, I didn’t know where your house was, I was just walking. I stopped because I heard... something.”

Steve glanced around, looking almost sheepish. “Ah, that was me, I was still too far away to tell if it was someone I knew.”

Squinting at him, Danny willed himself to relax. “You were growling at me?”

“A little, just as a warning until I got a little closer.”

That cleared up that mystery, though there was still the issue of the footprints. Danny could still make them out, further down, before they abruptly veered off. Odd, if someone else was there, wouldn’t Steve smell them, too?

“You wouldn’t, uh...” Danny trailed off, thinking he caught movement in the shadows. Why couldn’t the moon be full?! “You didn’t happen to catch a whiff of... anyone else out here, did you?”

Frowning, Steve opened his mouth to speak when a deep, guttural sound rose from the shadows beside them. Danny instantly froze, throat clicking as he dry-swallowed. He could see every muscle in Steve’s body tense, just before the other man barked out “move!” Danny instantly dropped and rolled, sending himself down closer to the surf. He heard what sounded like fabric ripping, what could’ve been Steve’s voice but more animalistic, and a howl of pain.

Getting onto his knees, Danny’s jaw dropped at the scene before him: Steve, wolfed out, on all fours with hackles raised. He was facing off against something, something decidedly bigger and scarier looking. Danny realized with sickening horror that this, _this_ was what they’d been looking for, this was what was responsible for all those murders.

Baring his teeth and growling, Steve’s muscles coiled as he readied himself to spring, the hybrid shifter watching, saliva dripping from it’s over sized jaws. It watched Steve, seemed totally uninterested, and turned it’s attention to Danny. Groaning, Danny backed slowly down towards the surf, hoping that the water would deter the creature. Apparently the idea of being in the water didn’t bother it, because the thing came towards him anyway, lumbering on two legs. Steve barked once, sharply, before springing, landing on the creature’s back and tearing into it’s neck with his teeth.

The creature made an agitated sound and swung, digging it’s overly large forepaws into the ground, trying to buck Steve loose. Danny got out of the way, digging into his pockets for his cellphone; they needed back-up, stat. Only... cursing, he realized that too was in the car, leaving him to either leave Steve to call for help, or stay and fight.

Steve yelped, a high pitched sound that Danny automatically associated with pain, and was flung to the ground by the creature. Trying to roll onto his belly and get his legs beneath him, Danny watched Steve snap his own impressive jaws at the creature. Knowing the situation was quickly going from bad to worse, Danny clenched his jaw and forced heat into his hands, rivulets of fire running down his arms.

“Hey asshole!” he yelled, trying to get the creature’s attention. “Eat this!”

When the creature turned it’s big, shaggy head towards him, Danny let fly, sending twin fireballs into the thing’s face. In the sudden light, Danny got a clear view of what the thing looked like, and he shivered despite the immense heat running through him. One fireball caught it in the face, the other in the chest, and Danny watched it stumble back on it’s hind legs, obviously struggling for balance. Rushing to Steve, Danny wrapped his arms around the fur-clad body and tried to drag his injured partner away. The creature had other ideas, practically roaring with fury when it saw Danny trying to get away with it’s prize. Advancing, Danny could see in his mind’s eye what he’d look like if this thing got it’s giant, razor-clawed paws on him. 

Wrapping himself around Steve as best he could, Danny screwed his eyes shut and held his breath. He could see the sudden bright light through his eyelids, knew it probably looked like a bomb had gone off to anyone in the area, and prayed no civilians were awake and watching.

There was a scream of agony, so clearly half-human that Danny’s stomach turned, and he dared himself to look: the thing was taking off down the beach, fur on fire, stumbling into the waves before going under. It popped back up after a moment but kept swimming, out into deeper water. Danny didn’t waste time wondering, he turned his attention back to Steve, who’d somehow managed to shift back without Danny realizing it.

“Let’s get you inside, quick,” he mumbled, hauling Steve to his feet and tucking himself under one arm, holding some of the other man’s weight. They hurried inside, Steve’s movements clumsy. Once safely in the kitchen, Danny deposited Steve at the table and locked the door behind him, hands shaking.

“Uh, Danny?”

Whipping around, Danny scanned Steve for injuries, eyes darting over the other man before his brain caught up.

Naked.

Steve was stark naked. 

Blushing ten shades of red, Danny averted his gaze to somewhere over Steve’s left ear. “Yes Steven?”

“Would you mind grabbing me a towel or two? In the laundry room, behind you.”

Grateful for the excuse to turn his back, he hurried into the small laundry room, digging a few towels out of the laundry basket. He flung them at Steve, turning again when the other man stood to wrap a towel around his waist.

“I might need your help for this,” he said a moment later, and when Danny turned back, all prudent areas were covered.

“With what?”

Steve turned in his chair and lifted an arm, showing an impressive set of claw marks over his ribs. Danny hissed through his teeth. 

“Under the sink is a first-aide kit, I want to swab for DNA and then put some antiseptic on it.”

Retrieving the kit, Danny helped swab and disinfect, biting his lip at the sight of the wound.

“This’ll heal on it’s own, right? I don’t have to take you to the hospital?” he asked, concerned. Steve grinned, gently patting a gauze pad in place.

“Yeah, in a few hours there’ll be nothing there but a small scar. I just like to make sure it’s clean first, just in case.”

“That was fucking crazy, did you _see_ that thing?”

Gently leaning himself back in the chair, Steve took a few deep breathes while Danny took a seat opposite. “Yeah, I saw. Obviously a hybrid, but a not-well thought out one. The arms looked way too long, torso short, hind legs short... completely disproportionate. Whoever put that thing together did a shitty job.”

“I don’t think they care, it looked strong as hell, stronger than you.”

Steve scowled at that, but had to agree. “Oh, it was. Makes me wonder what other sorts of chemicals are floating around in there. It’s possible hormones or steroids are involved here, for optimum strength. That usually leads to quick burn-out, though.”

“Pretty sure if I hadn’t turned on the gas, we’d have been toast, though I didn’t get the impression it was a go-all-night kind of thing.” Danny stared at his hands, rubbing his thumbs and forefingers together. He hadn’t used the fire like that in years, and certainly never in front of an audience.

“That thing you did, that was amazing, Danny.”

Startling, Danny jerked his head up. “Huh? What thing?”

Steve smiled, almost shy. “With the fire, when it was coming after us. You saved our asses, man, really.”

Blushing, Danny ducked his head. “It was either that or lose my partner, and I don’t feel like breaking in a new one.” Glancing up, Danny saw Steve grinning at him, a huge, dopey thing, and he was helpless not to smile back. How was it possible that he used to hate this guy?

~*~

“I cannot _believe_ you guys didn’t call us!” Kono practically shouted, pacing in front of them. Everyone had been called bright and early Monday morning, and while Chin was inputting this latest information into their files, Kono was fuming.

“I didn’t have my phone, and it wasn’t exactly like there was time to make a call,” Danny pointed out. “It was a life-or-death situation.”

“Totally,” Steve added. “If he’d left, I’d be dead.”

“I’m gonna kill you both myself next time,” Kono muttered. “Fine, just... you said you got DNA?”

“Well, I swabbed my wound for some, not sure if there’ll actually be any.”

Kono thew up her hands, doing a pretty spot-on impression of one Danny Williams, and stormed towards the door. “I’m going to the lab, I’ll call you maniacs if anything comes up.”

“Uh, is the yelling over?” Chin called, peering out of his office.

Grinning, Danny beckoned him over. “Yup, the yelling is over. You got anything?”

Approaching the surface table, Chin nodded, and called up a few composite drawings. “Based on your descriptions of the were-beast, I was able to find these, made based on other sightings. Apparently John Q Public has caught glimpses of this thing too, and as you can see, the descriptions are all very similar.”

They were, and Danny shuddered; he’d seen the real thing, and now more than ever did he want to get to the bottom of this.

“Oh, and the governor is ready to declare a state of emergency if--” Chin began before Steve abruptly cut him off.

“Whoa, you’ve been in touch with the governor? Why?”

Chin gave him a pointed look, eyebrow quirked. “Because she asked to be kept abreast of the investigation? That and I think this qualifies as important enough to tell her about.”

Steve flailed, frustration obvious. “Yeah but, we don’t even have any suspects!”

“Not yet, but we’ve been inputting all of the DNA we’ve collected into the system, and if you managed to get any and we get a match? It’s a step in the right direction,” Chin replied, nonplussed by Steve’s irritation. “Besides, given all of the information we have, it’s only a matter of time.”

Steve was wringing his hands, and Danny had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Immunity and means does not equal ‘never having to check in,’ babe,” he said, grinning. “You want her to keep funding us, we’re gonna have to keep her in the loop at least a little.”

“Yeah, whatever, fine.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Danny chuckled, bumping their shoulders together. “And focus on this instead: I burned the _shit_ out of that thing; even if they can heal like you, there’ll be some residual scarring, right? If we get a name from that DNA, it’ll be one more thing to help us get him.”

Steve nodded, having to concede at least that much. Just then his phone rang, and judging by the change in his demeanor, Danny was sure it was the mystery lady from the weekend.

“McGarrett... hey Cath! Yes, send it to my phone and we can upload it to our server from there. Great, thanks... I had a good time too. Ok, see you soon.” He hung up, noticed Chin and Danny’s curious glances, and shrugged them off, checking his phone after it alerted him to a message. “Ok, so my friend in Naval intel did a little digging, and evidently she was successful.”

Steve placed the phone on the surface table, and Chin brought up the information. A list of names and addresses appeared, fifteen in all. Danny whistled; that was the exact number they were looking for. Chin continued to bring up information, including blood type, and Danny could feel a little tickle at the back of his neck; they were close, they were _so close._

Chin’s phone chirped, and he put it on speaker. “Yeah Kono, what’ve you got.”

“Hey, so Steve did get some DNA, and it was a match to a sample we collected from one of the crime scenes.”

“In the system?” Steve asked, hopeful.

There was some rustling before Kono came back on. “Yes, actually, a guy from the mainland, Jay Smith? He was here working on his doctorate and went missing a few months ago, he never turned up and the case went cold.”

Danny frowned. “Why was he in the system?”

“Government funded research projects require it here,” Chin said. “Especially if the person is studying endangered species.”

“Anyway, the DNA Steve got and the DNA from one of the crime scenes matched to him, but so far just to one.” Kono told them, the sound of a keyboard clicking loud in the background.

“Jay Smith... he’s on this list from Mersche,” Danny pointed out, squinting at the screen. “Jesus, he was one of the test subjects.”

Silence from Kono, then “whoa, really? Grad students generally don’t have time to work much, so I can see him doing a study like that for extra cash.”

“Obviously whatever they injected the subjects with mixed well with his blood type,” Steve murmured. “Kono, add the blood type AB to your search parameters, that might help you with the crime scenes. If there’s a match, then it’ll help us narrow down the list.”

“On it Boss,” Kono said before ending the call. The three men stared at the screen, silent. After months of nameless, faceless monsters, they finally had something.

“While I’m thrilled to have someone to link all this to, it still doesn’t tell us who was in charge of these experiments,” Danny said, breaking the silence. “The person who set this up is the mastermind behind the whole thing, I think. I mean, if they did a test run and knew what they were gonna end up with, then this person willingly sent these monsters out into the world.”

“That is an excellent point,” Chin muttered, hands flying over the surface table. “Why bother needing a group of people to experiment on if they weren’t sure what the outcome would be? Really, it’s starting to look less like an experiment and more like a purposeful thing. They might’ve only needed a group because they weren’t sure which blood types would take.”

Danny shook his head, disgusted. “The fact that someone did this to people on purpose sickens me, it really does. What the fuck? What’s to be gained by turning people into monsters that go on killing rampages?”

“Revenge?” Steve offered, thoughtful. “All the victims were tied to Mersche in some way; why kill off an entire block of scientists? Has to be a reason, right? What if the ring-leader here was a test subject, the sole test subject, that they experimented on, and is using these new hybrids as a way to take out the people that hurt them in the first place.”

“And what, when the hybrids shift back to humans, they aren’t gonna be pissed that someone did this to _them?_ Because I’d sure as hell be angry if someone recruited me for their personal vendetta.” Danny was pacing, feeling himself getting wound up.

“The one that attacked us... hear me out, now, this might sound crazy, but when I’m the wolf, I’m still using my human brain. I’m not a wolf on the inside, I can still strategize and think like a human. When I was sizing this thing up, I got the weird feeling that there... wasn’t a human mind behind it. The way it moved, it’s reactions... there was no human element there.”

Chin blinked at him, frowning. “Are you saying it fought like an animal? We obviously aren’t wrong about humans being involved, here, it isn’t like these things were once dogs or apes.”

Steve nodded, grimacing. “Yeah, it’s movements were unpredictable, there was no style to speak of. I dunno, I’m pretty sure the human element was gone.”

“What’s your point?” Danny asked, folding his arms across his chest.

“My point is that the person who lured in people like Jay Smith? Is the source of this. We need to find out who that first test subject was,” Steve said, brows furrowing. “I’m almost positive there’s no record of that, though.”

Danny shrugged. “Why not call your, uh, girlfriend and ask her to find out? She could do it.”

Steve gave him an odd look, cocking his head to the side. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Before Danny could respond, Chin’s phone rang again. “Go Kono.”

“Guys, so the AB blood type did appear at three other crime scenes, as well as B and O.”

Scanning the list, Steve let out a whoop. “Yes! Ok, and these are blood samples that fit the criteria?”

“Yes sir, they’ve got the weird magical science compound in common, just like the first one.”

Chin extracted the AB, B, and O types from the list, leaving them with seven. “It looks like only A blood types managed to miss out.”

“So that leaves seven... I wonder if they’re all missing persons, too,” Danny remarked, watching as photo after photo appeared on the screen. He turned to grin at Chin over his shoulder; the man had read his mind.

“All missing persons, all non-natives, looks like,” Steve said, studying the faces. “Ages appear to vary, so probably not grad students.”

“Common denominator is that they all recently relocated here,” Chin said, skimming the reports. “They hadn’t really put down any roots or made too many connections, and in each case it took a week or more for anyone to notice they were gone. Probably the same for the other eight.”

“Perfect targets. Kono?” Steve called, thinking. “Run our samples again, against missing persons cases from the last eight months or so.”

“Gotcha!”

“We’re so close!” Steve thumped his fist against the edge of the surface table.

“I’m telling you, get your not-girlfriend to hack their system again! I’m pretty sure this guy is no longer on the payroll, he probably even worked with the scientists that were killed. He could’ve faked his death or something, so he’d be lumped in with the ones that died,” Danny said, watching Steve, brows raised.

“She isn’t my-- we’re not-- there isn’t a thing, ok? And I’m not sure she’ll do it; she has to use the tech onboard, and they log key-strokes. Too many anomalies and her CO will be asking her what’s up.”

It didn’t escape Danny’s attention that Steve seemed to be almost pleading with him, eyes earnest. Which didn’t make sense; usually guys loved to brag about their conquests, obviously there was something else going on there. For the meantime, Danny would be the bigger man and leave it alone.

“Whatever she is to you, if they log key-strokes then yeah, we should probably let her lay low on that front. There’s gotta be another way to find this guy’s name, though.” Danny thumped his fist lightly against his thigh, thinking.

“You’re thinking this guy would’ve tried to make it look like he’d been killed along with the others,” Chin murmured, tapping his fingers against the edge of the surface table. “It’d make sense, no one would suspect someone that’s alleged to be dead.” His hands flickered over the screen, calling up the names of all the victims. 

“Wouldn’t be a secretary, in my opinion,” Danny offered, scanning the victim files. “So we can exclude them. And probably not the chem guys, either, right?”

“They’d be making the compounds, but they wouldn’t be handling the animals,” Steve frowned. “They wouldn’t be doing the actual testing, but I don’t think that matters, they’d still be involved. Leave ‘em in.”

Chin nodded, fingers clicking over the screen. “That leaves ten possible.”

“One body per name, yeah? One name per residence... take out the spouse and child of the Tanner guy,” Danny suggested, squinting at the screen.

“Seven. Ok, gimme a minute.” Chin typed something in, and drivers licenses and addresses flew by on the screen, pairing off with the respective victim file, until only one was left. “Ah, here we go. Danny, you’re a genius.”

Danny blushed, nodding his thanks. One man remained on the screen; his address was the same as another victim, but the name was different, and the other victim’s identity had been confirmed. Danny shook his head; human error was almost always the problem in a case like this.

“Brian Raybury,” Steve read, and Danny swore he could feel the other man’s hackles rising. “Former military, had just started working for Mersche when he suddenly went missing. I don’t remember seeing his name on the files Mersche sent us.”

“They sent us jack shit, those files were worthless,” Danny said, flat. “I’m deciding to forget they exist, for all the help they gave us. What’d he do in the lab?”

“Chemist,” Chin said, scanning the files on the surface table. “He tested for biological weapons in the field, had a pretty good knowledge of different compounds and their effects on humans and animals. Looks like he examined victims who came into contact with bio weapons.”

“So he’d have some prior knowledge of what animal testing and human testing could do, which would make him a great candidate for the--” Danny started.

“Whistle blower,” Steve finished for him, eyebrows arched high. “This might’ve been the guy who put out the anonymous tips. He managed to escape from Mersche, tried to blow the whistle, but nothing happened fast enough for him, so he took matters into his own hands.”

“Lets say this was a personal vendetta against the scientists that did this to him, why then are these things still roaming around, and why was one of them following me?” Danny asked. “He killed the people responsible, it’s over now.”

“Not if he’s lost control of the experiments,” Chin suggested, frowning. “If there really was no human element, like Steve said... then in the animal shape, they’re just as indiscriminate as a wild animal. He might’ve been able to direct and control them before, but he can’t now, something’s changed.”

“We need to know what exactly changed, because those things still being out there means more people will die,” Steve said. “Is there a real address for this guy?”

After a few swipes of the table, Chin frowned. “Nothing recent; there’s a listing from a year ago, a small bungalow on the North Shore, but it could have new tenants.”

“Still worth a look,” Steve said before storming towards the door, leaving Danny to hurry after him. Curse the man and his long legs!

~*~

A young woman with a toddler on her hip answered the door, looking bewildered. She shook her head no when asked if she knew Brian Raybury, though Danny wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure? Here, take a look at this photo, sometimes it’s hard to remember a name.”

He called up the picture they had of Raybury on his phone and showed her, the woman scanning it. He watched her brows furrow, then shoot up again.

“Yeah! Haole -- no offense -- was here when I came to check the place out, said he wanted ‘good renters’ to take over for him, I guess the family that owns the house are elderly or something.”

Steve frowned. “Do you remember anything else about him?”

The woman wrinkled her nose. “He was dirty, brah, like a homeless guy. I remember thinking it was good I’d left the kids with my mom. And he was kinda shifty, eyes all crazy, I thought maybe drugs.”

“Did he say anything else to you, besides the remark about good renters?” Danny asked, hopeful.

“Nope, he stayed maybe five minutes and took off when the realtor pulled up. Thought it was kinda weird, but maybe he wasn’t ‘sposed to be here, huh? I was glad when he left, though, guy was seriously tweaking.”

“Thanks,” Steve told her, before turning on his heel and making his way back to the car. Danny rolled his eyes; at least he’d said thanks this time.

“We appreciate your time, miss,” he said, shaking the woman’s hand.

She gripped it tightly for a moment, eyes large. “Should I, like, be worried about this guy?”

Danny chewed his lip. “Have you seen him since that first time?”

The woman shook her head. “Nah, not since like six months.”

Danny smiled at her, going for reassuring. “Then you should be fine. Feel free to call me, though, if you see anything weird.” He handed her a card and made his way to the Camaro, noting that Steve was already in the drivers seat with the engine running.

“What else did she say?” he asked when Danny got in.

“Just wanted to know if she had reason to be concerned, and I told her no; he hasn’t been back in six months, I doubt he’s suddenly going to remember her now. That and this is pretty far away from where the murders have been happening.”

“So we’ve got no known recent address for this guy. That’s fantastic.”

Danny shrugged. “Chin said the information was like a year old, long shot from the start.”

“I dont wanna sit around HQ all day trying to find puzzle pieces, I want to be _doing_ something,” Steve grumbled, slouching down in his seat and folding his arms across his chest. He was sulking, and Danny, so help him, found even that to be attractive.

“So do I, but babe, that’s how you do good police work. Sometimes all you have are puzzle pieces, not everything is beating feet.”

Steve glanced at him and sighed, putting the car in gear. “I don’t feel like going all the way back over there now... wanna go check out Pipeline?”

Danny spluttered. “You want to go _surfing?_ Right now?”

“Unless you’ve got a board hidden in here, no, obviously I can’t go surfing. But we can walk around some... the ocean clears my head, maybe listening to the water will help us think.”

“Help _you_ maybe,” Danny muttered, scowling. “I hate the beach.”

~*~

Steve navigated them to a less populated area of beach and they left the car in the lot, Danny eventually caving and removing his shoes.

“Did you ever surf here?” he asked, finally catching up to Steve.

Chuckling, the other man shook his head. “Nah, I’m not good enough for that. You gotta have serious skills, like Kono. She surfs here all the time, or she used to.”

Danny felt his eyes widen. “Whoa, really?”

“Yeah, she was a pro but she blew out her knee, had to leave the sport. Not competing didn’t stop her, though, she still gets out as much as she can.”

Nodding, Danny followed Steve’s gaze out over the water. Abruptly, the other man sat in the sand, knees drawn up to his chest. Gingerly, Danny sat down beside him.

“It’s just all so frustrating,” Steve murmured, seemingly more to himself than to Danny.

“What is?”

“Everything. This case, my father...”

“We’re close, like you said,” Danny said, reaching to lightly thump Steve on the back. “But again, good police work is sometimes slow going. We’re getting there.”

“I know we are, and I’m glad, I just wonder sometimes, about what it was like.”

Danny frowned. “Huh?”

“When my dad was attacked. My family was a pack, and there are ties, we can... sort of feel each other. Like when my mom died... my sister and I _felt_ it, like something was ripping. I knew something had happened to my father even before I got the call, I could feel something was wrong.”

Blinking, Danny took a deep breath and asked “did you feel it? When he died?”

Barking out a bitter laugh, Steve shook his head. “No, though if I’d stayed close I might’ve. It’d been a few years since I’d seen him, I was on one mission or another, rarely came home. I guess the bond had weakened.”

“I’m sorry, Steve.”

Startled, Steve blinked at Danny. “What for?”

“For your loss! I, uh, never got a chance to say, before. I was a little busy trying not to hate you.”

“Yeah, well, likewise. But I appreciate the sentiment anyway.”

They sat in companionable silence for a bit, when suddenly Steve’s phone began to chirp, the sound almost angry. Digging it out of his pocket, he answered “go, Chin.”

“Hey! Did you guys get lost or something? We found a recent address for Brian Raybury.”

Steve did a fist-pump, and Danny tried not to laugh out loud. “And?” the taller man asked, excited.

“And Kono thinks she knows the answer to our missing human element problem. It’s kind of a big one, are you both sitting down?”

“Yeah, just spill it,” Danny called, leaning in close to hear and pressing himself right up alongside Steve in the process.

“Ok, so she found some mutations in the DNA, and she thinks -- as well as some of the other guys in the lab -- that once injected, the accepting bloodtypes absorbed the compound into the genetic material and changed it. These things don’t shift back to human, at all.”

Silence, as Steve and Danny stared at each other, two sets of wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Danny asked, bewildered. “So they get turned into monsters and they’re stuck that way? No wonder they’re angry!”

Chin huffed a sigh, muffled by the phone. “Exactly. I’m thinking all of the mutations resulted in their brains getting fried; they went crazy from it. I don’t blame them, to be honest, though it does explain the lack of human coordination and why the crime scenes were so horrific.” 

“So there’s no chance of getting our hands on Jay Smith or anyone and getting them to talk,” Steve added, growling slightly. “That’s just great.”

“We dont need them, the man said we have a recent address for Raybury,” Danny said, smacking Steve upside the back of his head. The hustled up from the sand and raced to the car, Danny tugging his shoes on once inside, Chin rattling off the address and Steve peeling them out of the parking lot.

The address was closer to HQ, which put Raybury more in the area of the killings. Parking around the corner slightly, Danny and Steve tugged TAC vests and weapons out of the trunk, preparing themselves. This wasn’t the type of situation where they could call HPD for backup; being the first, Raybury might be able to shift at will, and regular ammunition would be useless.

Moving quietly, the two men approached the front door, weapons drawn. Steve came upon it first, glanced at Danny and knocked loudly. “Brian Raybury? Five-0, open up!”

Danny counted ten Mississippi’s in his head before he gave Steve a nod and watched the other man kick the door in. Wincing, Danny followed him in, weapon raised watching Steve’s back and helping him clear the area. The house was single story, neat, more like a renter’s vacation house than a real home. Frowning, Steve holstered his weapon and began sniffing. Danny watched him scent the room, starting in the middle and working his way to the corners. He made it back to the kitchen and stopped in front of a door with a large deadbolt lock on it.

_Basement?_ Danny wondered, narrowing his eyes at the deadbolt. It could be opened from the inside, which was odd.

“I smell him,” Steve murmured, palms pressed flat against the door, one ear touching the wood. “Hear him, too.”

Steve’s voice had taken on a gravelly quality; the wolf was close. Danny manfully suppressed the shudder of desire that ran through him at the sound.

“We can’t just go barreling down there, he probably has heightened senses just like you and if so then he knows we’re here.”

Steve nodded, reaching for the locking mechanism of the deadbolt and flicking it to the opposite side, unlocking it. If the secondary lock was being used, he’d just kick that door in, too.

“Brian Raybury,” Danny called once Steve had pried open the door -- thankfully without kicking it in. “This is Five-0, we know you’re down there. Come up with your hands raised, we just want to talk.”

Danny had barely finished speaking when Raybury’s voice floated up the stairs from the basement.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m afraid I’m a bit... indisposed at the moment, so you’ll have to come to me.” There was a rattling, and Steve mouthed “cage.”

“We need to know you aren’t armed,” Danny continued, a hand pressed against the front of Steve’s TAC vest; he was dying to get down there.

“I can assure you I’m not.”

Sighing, Danny let go and Steve eased himself down the stairs. He gave Danny a thumbs-up -- the man wasn’t armed -- and made his way down.

 

The basement was huge, far larger than the house above it, and full of all sorts of restraints. If Danny didn’t know any better, he would’ve sworn it was the well-stocked den of a dominatrix. In the center was a cage that stretched floor to ceiling, and within was Brian Raybury, sitting calmly on a cot. 

He looked normal, _too_ normal in Danny’s opinion, in his plain t-shirt and khaki pants.

“Good afternoon, officers,” he said, dark eyes intense. 

“Brian Raybury?” Steve asked, needing to be sure. The other man nodded, and Steve snarled. “You’re under arrest.

Raybury quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? I haven’t done anything.”

“Really? You locked yourself in a cage; that’s got guilty written all over it,” Danny cut in.

“Actually, one could say my locking myself in a cage is preventative; I’m protecting the public.”

“How is letting a half-dozen monsters loose in Honolulu _protecting_ anyone?” Steve snapped, eyes blazing. “They’ve killed almost twenty people.”

“I’m afraid I have nothing to do with that,” Raybury said, shaking his head. “I have no control over them.”

“But you do admit to creating them?” Danny pressed, phone in hand and recorder app running.

Raybury shrugged. “I obviously had something to do with their creation, or else you wouldn’t be here. I never directed them to go on a killing spree, however.”

“Liar,” Steve barked.

“Call me whatever you want, but I’m not saying anything else.”

“We have evidence that ties you to the murders,” Danny said, sneering. “You could be charged with conspiracy to murder and negligent homicide.”

Sighing, Raybury shook his head. “Yes, well, you’d have to get _them_ to testify against me, and I doubt they have the capability. But, you already knew that, didnt you?”

The expression on Raybury’s face was smug, and Steve seemed to be shifting by inches, canines elongating, fingernails warping into claws. Danny slowly moved to stand between Steve and the cage, shooting the taller man a look and hoping he’d get the hint and back off.

“We’ll get to them, and we _are_ going to talk, but not here. C’mon, I know you’ve got a key there somewhere,” Danny said, clapping his hands together.

“Ah, but my leaving this cage would be problematic for you. I shift cyclically, and the time is nearly here.”

“Cyclically?” Danny repeated, frowning. The full moon wasn’t for another few days; Steve’s testiness would soon rear its head.

“By the moon,” Raybury said, nodding. “Much like your… friend… there. Unlike him, however, my shift will begin before the moon has filled. The full moon signals the height of the cycle.”

“So you’re a monster for a few days instead of a few hours,” Danny muttered, thoughtfully. As state of the art as HQ was, and for all it’s peculiar-human contingencies, their holding cells were not equipped to deal with a shifter at the height of their cycle. Hell, it wouldn’t hold Steve, and these monsters were twice the size and strength.

“Danny,” Steve growled, eyes an inky black. 

“Babe, I hate to say it but… he has a point, about the cage thing. We don’t have the means to contain him at HQ, and in the interest of keeping everyone safe… I think he needs to stay here.”

Steve made an unintelligible sound, and Danny grimaced. He didn’t like it either, but what could they do? 

“It would seem your hands are tied, gentlemen,” Raybury offered, smirking. “I wish I could help you, I truly do.”

“What if I just shoot you?” Steve growled, pressing right up against the bars. “I’ve got a clip of silver bullets, they’d do the trick.”

Raybury quirked an eyebrow. “Mmm, and killing me helps you how? You want information regarding… them, do you not? Without me you’ll never get rid of them.”

“What if we make you a deal,” Danny said, flat. “We have a contact in the DA’s office who works peculiar human cases specifically, we can get it in writing.”

Cocking his head to the side, Raybury seemed to consider it. “What would I get in exchange for helping you?”

“A peculiar human facility where you’ll live out the rest of your days.”

Raybury laughed. “Life sentence? Please.”

Danny shrugged, silently hoping Steve could be patient for another few minutes. “Trust me, you don’t want to end up in a regular facility. Those guys? Have zero tolerance. You may be strong once you’ve shifted, but as a human? You’re weak, I can tell. Most mainland prisons have terrible accommodations for shifters, and if you end up in central holding you’ll probably get shanked.”

“They also keep you sedated so you don’t shift,” Steve whispered, words garbled in his throat; wolves don’t have the same vocal chords as humans. “So you’d be easy prey.”

“This is contingent on you having a case,” Raybury mentioned, still smirking.

“We have plenty,” Danny snapped. “Where you end up is dependant on you, pal. I’d just as soon as drug you, lock you up, and throw away the key.”

“Fine.” Raybury’s voice wobbled, and Danny noted -- with no small amount of satisfaction -- that he seemed far less confident. “What do you want to know.”

“Where are the others.”

“They have a nest…” Raybury began. “I’m sure you’ve probably already figured out that they are… less than human. They run as a pack and nest together. They don’t like humans, can’t remember that they ever actually _were_ human.”

“Where’s the nest,” Steve growled, voice barely recognizable now. Danny could see the other man’s canines elongating, his hair lengthening, ears coming to a sharp point.

“Underground, in the sewers. They prefer darkness, as I’m sure you’re also aware.”

Danny frowned, tapping his foot. The amount of manpower it’d take to flush the pack out of the sewer was not something they had access to; they’d have to be driven out somehow.

“How do you communicate with them?” he asked, glancing at Steve and wincing; he was almost to the half-way point, if they didn’t get him out of the basement soon, he’d be completely wolfed out.

“I can communicate with them psychically. I reconstructed the DNA used to create them; they no longer understand language so speaking to them is pointless.” Raybury shrugged. “I gave them the mental image of the intended… victims… and where to find them.”

“You wanted them to kill all those people? Even the ones who had nothing to do with what happened to you?” Danny demanded, feeling his blood begin to boil. 

Raybury grinned. “Not _all_ of them, no… I might’ve subliminally mentioned wiping all of them out, however.”

Nodding, Danny pivoted on his heel, grabbed Steve by what was left of his elbow, and hauled him up the stairs. They needed to take Raybury into custody -- which would have to be organized with a team specifically used to extract dangerous peculiar humans -- and figure out a way to get the pack out in the open.

Once out of the house, Steve seemed to shift in reverse, once again fully human.

“Did you get all that?” Danny asked, arms crossed over his chest. “Or were you too far gone.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I’ve explained this to you; my brain is still human even when I’m the wolf. Yes, I heard and understood everything he said.”

Danny held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Ok ok, no need to get snappy. Alright, so I’m thinking we need to use this shmuck to get in touch with the pack.”

“I think so, too, but I have a feeling it’ll take more than just him. They’re becoming autonomous; I doubt Raybury would’ve sent one after you and me.”

Shrugging, Danny made his way to the car, digging out his phone. He dialed out to Chin, “hey, we found the guy, we need an extraction team… he caged himself up in the basement, apparently he shifts cyclically and will be doing it soon. Can that be prepared for? Ok, great. See you in a bit.”

“Do you think Raybury knows where the nest is, specifically?” Steve asked, frowning. “I mean, werewolves don’t _nest_ , they’d have to be taught that behavior. And underground? Somewhere dark and dank… he has to have shown them that, or given them the idea.”

“Maybe… we’ll know more once we get him in for further questioning.” Danny gestured to the armored truck pulling up; the extraction team. The team leader approached and conferred with Steve, who advised them on how best to go about the extraction. Danny half listened, removing his vest -- the nylon slightly melted on the underside -- and tucked it back in the car. They were closer than they’d ever been; all that stood between them and getting the monsters off the street was a smug, narcissistic creep. 

It seemed almost too easy.


End file.
